Free the Cubans!!! Lift All Economic Sanctions Against Cuba

I would love it if the Cuban people rose up and turned on their oppressors in order to rule themselves. The government there is evil and there's no looking past that. However, I don't see the Cubans rising up from within. So...

Let the Castro brothers claim victory. Our tourists will create a market economy and sow the seeds of outside ideas. European and Canadian tourists already go there in small numbers. Let them (and us) flock there. There are miles of pristine beaches, good weather, plentiful sugar cane, and lots of cigars to go around.

Democracy and a little Capitalism will follow someday after the Castros are gone. Democracy won’t if the Cuban people are continually taught to hate and fear us. They'll be content to be as they are... a backward, isolated nation. Cubans can enact laws to ensure partial Cuban ownership of everything so they don't get overrun by commercial interests again. Mexico does it.

If I were elected President, my first foreign trip would be to Cuba, not Canada as tradition holds (Bush II went to Mexico first). I would speak to the "Congress" and announce the intention to drop sanctions immediately on live TV. I'd also blast the sitting government and let them know there's something better out there. Cuba can be a land of opportunity. Then I'd leave and watch the beanstalk grow.

Please share your thoughts.

Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) -- Everyone on Zulu

My friend Mike submitted this idea. I’m not sold on it yet, but I'll put it in here to illicit comments.

Abolish time zones. Everyone should be on a universal time with a 24-hour clock. One time for the world. This would not change how anyone conducts business, it would only change the man-made time they do it. For example, instead of being open from 0900 – 1600 (24-hour clock), the New York Stock Exchange would be open from 1500 – 2200. No change in business and no change to the fact that the sun is up while they are open.

Implementing this would be hard. I don't think you could get many countries outside the zulu timezone to go along with it, but it may be a good idea.

People are used to it being 12:00pm when the sun is directly overhead. It would be hard for people to get used to 1200 as the middle of the night. Having said that, the military does its worldwide operations on zulu time (GMT) and gets along fine. It can be done. It's only a matter of should it be done?

Please share your thoughts.

Free the Indians!

The Indian Reservation system is a disgrace and should be phased out as soon as possible. While there are a handful of advantages to growing up on the reservation (some offer to send their kids to college), most Indian reservations are dead-end quagmires of hopelessness. Alcoholism and now methamphetamine drugs plague these places. Many have become distribution sources for meth. Reservations are exempt from state law, so only the Feds can do anything there. The Feds do very little, so the problems fester. The Indians continue to suffer. Further, casino money is fueling the alcohol, crime, and meth problems. The Reservation system is a failure.

The horrible thing to me is if an Indian youth aspires for more, he's put down by the other Indians as becoming "Washisha" (white). He just wants to succeed.

The Reservation lands should be given to those tribes to do with as they please. If they want to make a commune, ok. If they want to sell it, ok. BUT, that land will become part of whatever state it’s in and subject to its laws and taxes. Individual states can handle the details. The turnover date should be five years out from passage of the law with all state laws and regulations followed by the ten-year mark (i.e. If the state doesn’t allow gambling, a casino will close.).

American Indians have been held in stasis for the last 100+ years by the reservation system. It is time they catch up to the society around them. Indians can and should remain as Indian as they want to be. My ancestors (Pennsylvania Dutch) came here well over 200 years ago and have retained their customs, language, and religion. There is no reason the Indians can't do the same. They should.

Related subject: Casinos, while bringing jobs and cash, destroy a society from within. They are great for the owners and horrible for the patrons. Casinos are NOT an honorable way to support yourself.

Please share your thoughts.

--UPDATE, September 2009--

I just read an article on CNN.com detailing the plight of Indians on a Lakota Reservation (http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/08/13/king.sotu.economy/index.html).

The article says unemployment is 80%. I have a hint, a clue, a proposal or a suggestion... GET OFF THE RESERVATION!!!!! It's killing you.

--UPDATE, March 2010--

Here's an article talking about the modern-day mismanagemnt of Indian Affairs by the Feds. The Federal Gov't needs to give up and let the Tribes run their own show as discussed above. http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/12/08/indian.land/index.html

-- UPDATE, July 2010 --

Oh this is great. The Iroquois "National" team is trying to travel to the Lacrosse World Championships in jolly ol' England. They insist on traveling using their Iroquois passports and not American passports, insisting on the sovereignty of their nation. Wrong answer! The ignorance gets better. In this story, "Iroquois passport dispute raises sovereignty issue" (http://apnews.excite.com/article/20100717/D9H10RB81.html), one of them says, "You know that as a young person that you are sovereign, that you are not part of the United States," he said. "We were the first people here." That is about the most ignorant thing I've heard in a long time. He is a US citizen, like it or not. If he doesn't, he can leave.

Further, the Indians who the European settlers found in North America were at least the third wave of immigrants. They killed, maimed, and assimilated their way into the lands the Europeans found them on. If he knew anything about "his people", he ought to know that. Again, it's time to end the charade. Disband the reservations, give the land to the Indians, make the former reservations part of the states they are in, and move on.

Convert to the Metric System

America's use of the old English measurement system is an embarrassment. The rest of the world converted to metric-only long ago. The US, and pockets of Britain, are the last vestiges of people who use the English system.

We already use the system in some ways. For instance, my car has a 3.1 Liter engine and I drink Coke from a 2-liter bottle. These are metric measurements. We need to fully convert in order to make it easier to interact with the rest of the world. The system is easy once learned and kids won't grow up trying to figure out how to convert from quarts to gallons, etc.

When I went through high school and college, all classes were done in metric. So, I know there is at least some familiarity with the system at least among those who are 35 and younger.

Converting would be fairly easy as far as who starts it. The Federal Government will have to set a timetable for when all of its dealings will be done in the metric system. Eventually, street signs and mapquest.com will convert (80 kilometers to Cleveland). Cars will have 40-liter gas tanks and the "mph" will be the small numbers on the speedometer and opposed to "kph", which will be the bigger numbers.

Eventually, everything down to grandma's recipes will be done in liters and centiliters vs. quarts and cups. This may take a generation to take full effect, so the grandmas I'm referring to here are today's kids.

Unfortunately, this is one area where we'll have to suck it up and meet the world's standards as opposed to the other way around.

Please share your thoughts.

Humans Don't "Change"

I began reading "The Federalist Papers" yesterday. The series of articles was written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay in 1788 as they were trying to convince New York voters to elect representatives favorable to adopting the new Constitution. These words appear in Federalist #1, written by Alexander Hamilton:

"A dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people, than under the forbidding appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people."

Wow! Was he studying the past or the future? It is amazing to me that in the 220 years since Federalist #1 was written, history continues to repeat itself and those words apply today. You can see what happens today when you stand up to those who wish to destroy majority rule (with minority rights) and replace it with minority rule (with mandated majority silence)...

"Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely" (Baron John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, 1887). We'll see what the present holds for America...

Oddly enough, Alexander Hamilton was accused of being power hungry and ambitious in his own time.

Thoughts?

We Need a New Tax Code

Our federal tax code is broken. We pay a variety of stupid taxes and subsidize a whole industry (read H&R Block) just to figure it out. The federal tax code needs to be simplified so we can do as Gov. Mike Huckabee says: "Fire the IRS." A few examples of stupid taxes are below, followed by a few possible fixes.

We are paying a tax on our phone bills for the Spanish-American War from 1898! That war was paid off within a decade or two, yet we are still paying the tax because taxes are like crack to Congress... just one hit and they're hooked.

Taxes don't stop when you die. We pay an inheritance tax on estates over $1 million. This tax was instituted to help pay for World War One. WORLD WAR ONE! (See www.deathtax.com) It has stayed in the tax code ever since and has destroyed many small-to-medium family businesses. By the way, the people who write the laws also write exemptions into it for themselves with non-profits, etc. This is how the Kennedys keep their fortune from one generation to the next.

Married couples pay more in tax than two single people living together. This discourages people from getting married. With tax rates on the rise, this situation will get worse. Don't we have enough illegitimate children in the world (Be a man and get married LeBron.)?

How do we fix this stupidity? First, throw the entire tax code in the fire and start from scratch.

What do we implement in its place? Some, like Alan Keyes, prefer to go back to import duties and tariffs. This would get rid of individual and corporate income tax completely. In effect, we'd pay a sales tax on imported goods and services. I disagree with this approach because other countries will do the same to us and our goods and services will suffer abroad.

Others, like Steve Forbes, suggest a flat income tax. The flat tax would be around 15% with no exemptions (or maybe one for a first home mortgage). Apparently, the flat tax is working wonders in Russia because its harder to dodge taxes. The flat tax is an equal burden by all in terms of percentage, but not in terms of impact on lives. The poor wouldn't have a larger burden, but the flat tax would have a disproportionate impact on their lives.

Finally, some people (like me) advocate a consumption tax. It rewards those who save/invest their money and tax those who spend lavishly. This can be done in one of two ways. One way would be to add a tax at the checkout counter, say 15%. This would be the easiest way to ensure everyone pays the tax. I wouldn't tax food or some standard household goods like toilet paper, etc. It would be up to corporations to keep track of and pay the tax to the government. This may mean we have to end the relatively tax-free nature of the internet.

The other way to implement a consumption tax is to have a form where you report your income, take off a standard deduction for your family size (takes care of food, etc.), report what you saved/invested, and the rest is what you consumed. This could be done progressively so the people adding a new wing on their mansions to house their car collection will be taxed at a higher rate than those of us just trying to get by. A decent explanation can be found here: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2007/10/robert-frank-we.html

Of the two ways to implement a consumption tax, the first seems to be the easiest to implement... at least for individuals.

Please share your thoughts.

The Responsible Electorate -- Earned Right to Vote

We have a problem in the US with an irresponsible electorate. The way to fix it is to have people earn the right to vote by having an interest in the success of the USA.

When the Roman Republic was rising, only landowners could serve in the Legion. Those who fought were fighting for their homes and families. They were vested in the enterprise. As Rome grew, they did away with this requirement, became an Empire, became corrupt, and collapsed from within... with the help of some Barbarians.

The right to vote in the US used to come with a property (land) requirement. Those who voted did so knowing it would affect them directly. Early Americans were vested in the enterprise and made responsible decisions. The two political parties weren't too far from each other in day-to-day economic and foreign policy although they differed in things like the gold standard and a national bank.

Today, we have an irresponsible electorate and are in danger of collapsing from within. People vote without thought to the consequences. We are easily swayed by the non-stop media saturation of our lives. I propose that the right to vote should have requirements.

One requirement could be property ownership. That requirement would solve the problem, but would obviously be a non-starter because it would favor the "rich" and it would be demonized from the start.

Another possible requirement could be earning the right to vote through public service for at least 2 years (or four years). Such service could be on the local, state, or national level. Service at any level gets you the right to vote at all levels. The service could be as a forest ranger, Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, military, fireman, police, public school teacher, etc. Other possibilities for qualified service could be a small range of private professions like doctor, nurse, dentist, etc.

This service requirement would not only get people interested in bettering the country, but it would create an electorate with a background bigger than their city block and a vested interest in the enterprise... the USA.

Please post your thoughts.