Priorities for the next 4 years

[drudixon]

Was doing some thinking on the topic, and decided to flesh some out. I'm curious to read what others have to write. If you do chime in, try to keep the emotions out, and dwell on tangible solutions that can actually achieve something in the way of positive results. This is long, so read, don't read, whatever.

HiTech Act - needs to be accelerated. C'mon, a health care provider can show "meaningful use" of electronic health records by sending in 5 electronic prescriptions a year?... This needs to be 90% of all records by 2016.

Medicare - today pays based on a principle and secondary diagnosis that must be filed in 72 hours. This practice alone wastes billions of dollars. Providers seek out the most expensive diagnoses possible while only spending a fraction of the pay rate for said diagnosis on the patient. Providers should be paid for work they actually do. I'm actually in favor of the way some European countries pay for health care. Providers are allocated patients and paid monthly for patients who don't visit them for care.

Obamacare - Great in theory, terrible in practice. Federal government has no accountability, or stake in the success and execution of the program, the states do. Plan still doesn't cover illegals. Doesn't address tort. Provides no real guidelines on how the states should execute. Also makes the way each state delivers the program beholden to the often times ridiculous Insurance regulations of each Do over with centralized structure. Also, Obamacare doesn't lower costs of administering plans, it raises the costs of this. Furthermore, it does nothing to lower the costs of goods sold / services rendered.

Social Security - Social security isn't truly insolvent. The fund needs to be pulled back out of the general ledger. Too often has congress dipped into funds for social security to pay for other programs; in a sense interest free loans for whatever they paid for.

Post Office - Get rid of the ridiculous practice of pre-funding benefits for workers who won't even be employed for another 30 years. WTF. Give the post office it's own account in the treasury and stop anal raping it. The post office was actually profitable prior to changing it's accounts in the department of treasury. It has little to do with the changing profile of the services rendered.

Education - Repeal NCLB. Dismal failure. Graduation rates for all brackets (HS, Bachelors, Post-Secondary) are all flat. This doesn't keep with the evolution of the US economy. The reality is the profile of jobs needed in America is changing, but the skills profile isn't. Sorry, there's no job security, just skills to do the jobs that are in demand. Businesses constantly learn how to do more with less. Low skill positions are leaving the country, for good reason. What company doesn't want to lower costs of goods sold? There are plenty of jobs available, many of which pay very well, yet over 70% of America lacks the skills to do those jobs (yes, less than 30% of America has a college degree).

Education cont- Make education skills based, not age based. Japan has shown remarkable success in this area. Students learn subjects based on their proficiency at said subject, not due to age, or to bring up slower students. The best need education for the best. The worst need to be given the chance to learn skills appropriate for their abilities (ie. bring back VoTech). There are a lot of wealthy heating and air technicians, plumbers, electricians, etc. Let high schoolers begin getting necessary certifications in these fields while in HS.

Food Stamps / Section 8 - Tie these programs directly to educational initiatives. People need help. Don't screw folks for being down and out, but don't reward people for doing nothing either. Give to get, applies here. Want social programs? Then learn something, contribute something. Perhaps institute mandatory community service for recipients so that the communities at large receive some benefit for the benefits they provide.

Immigration - Make it easier to become a citizen. It takes too long, costs too much money for immigrants to follow the current process. What we get is a large percent of the population who has a glass ceiling. Our current laws have created a class of people with no ability to advance in society. Consequently, they will continue to get government benefits, and never contribute to the system. Make them legal, let them move up in society. Our population bubble has too few workers. Given the prior point that the job skills profile in the country has changed, we need the immigrants to gain necessary skills to keep America as the world's best choice to hire in.

Unions - Dissolve. Make illegal. Teachers, semi-skilled workers, etc. Unions destroy productivity. Unions keep businesses from being competitive. Unions force higher wages for equal work, so a company given the choice of completing a given task at a higher cost, or lower one, will always choose the lower one. Sure, I want higher income like the next guy/gal, but I should deserve it, not simply get it because I've been doing the same job for 30 years. Look at the Chicago teachers strike. They striked not about wages, but because a provision in the contract would make them accountable for the work they do. My great grandfather was secretary of labor for NJ and I still oppose unions. I've seen too many businesses destroyed by them. Lastly, unions don't protect people any more. EEOC, OSHA, etc do.

Military - Continue shift away from mechanized warfare. The era of subs, aircraft carriers is over (for time being anyway). Invest in special ops, spies, and counter-insurgency measures. The necessary skills to do combat are changing, and the military began this with Rumsfeld's (love him or hate him, he was right on this one point) power projection platform, but has since gone back to the old ways of ground and pound. We have to stop spending $1 million on a guided missle to blow up a camel. We need assimilated soldiers who can knife our enemy in the back.

Military cont - Spend more on cyber warfare. Iran knocked out our drones with a DNOS attack. We've got to defend against these measures, and better yet, institute them ourselves. The virus that attacked the Iranian centrifuges was brilliant. We need more abilities like this to knock out communications, infrastructure etc. Easy to go to war against a blind opponent.

GSA - Change rules of purchasing. The lowest bidder concept, while great, doesn't always provide best value. Also, pre-allocating funds based on prior year expenditures only encourages departments to spend as much as possible, just so they have commensurate funds the following year. My old customer, FDA had a 4 year backlog of PCs they hadn't even deployed because of this.

Energy - Keystone pipeline - duh, bring it. Alternate fuel choices are still a long ways out. Punishing our current fuel supply only hamstrings our ability to move forward. Gain energy independence by switching to natural gas. Invest in technologies to better harness and use natural gas. The USA has enough natural gas to be the next Saudi Arabia, yet we do nothing to exploit that fact. Make it easier to drill. Easier to put up wind farms, solar farms, etc. It's still too costly to bring those technologies to bear.

NIH / FDA - Medical research is leaving the US in large part because of how NIH funds research. A potential drug, procedure, etc must be functionally "ready" in order to get funding. How many brilliant ideas never get money because they're not proven yet. You don't need money for a finished product, you need it for one you'd like to make. Our best minds are leaving so they can get money to create the next great thing. Then, the IP belongs to other nations.

Taxes -
Remove 100% of corporate taxes - this means taxes on earnings they make, as well as on products / raw materials they buy. The current tax code makes it far more beneficial for a company to invest overseas and keep the money overseas. The moment the money repatriates, we tax it. Taxes have no direct benefit to a company. NONE. In order for companies to not pay taxes on foreign earnings, they simply re-invest it in the foreign country where they made the money in the first place. Corporate taxes make up less than 16% of the general ledger. Let them go, and watch the jobs return to USA as costs fall and watch investments in local economies skyrocket. Additionally, history PROVES, lower taxes bring higher tax receipts. This isn't a political statement, simply a factual one.

Fair Tax individuals. Nuff said.

Gay Marriage - Sure. Legalize in all 50 states. Stop wasting money fighting this issue.

Guns - Leave as current.

NASA - Increase funding 20%. The next great thing has come out of NASA before. Let's give it a chance to do it again. It's a miniscule part of the budget.

Abortion - Leave as current. Stop late term abortions. Yes, I get the whole, it's the woman's body. I agree. However, late term, there are two bodies. I'll leave it at that.

TSA - Leave as current

DoT - (Transportation) Invest, invest, invest. The better our transportation systems are, the cheaper it is to do business in the US. People may not realize this, but the better the roads are, the more you make. Trains, subways, etc all bring jobs to the US. Our bridges, tunnels, etc are crumbling. Fix them.

VA - Keep current improvements. VA has gotten a lot better the past 10 years. Keep on current course and speed.

USDA - Bring back Bush era farm subsidies. I'm getting tired of buying tomatoes from Chile. Grocery prices have more than doubled in Obama's term. High grocery prices is a double whammy on poor people. Raise funding for parks and recreation. The more fun it is to be outside, the more people will go outside, and just maybe some obese folks will lose weight and be less of a burden on our healthcare.

Marijuana - legalize it. costs more to fight it than to deal with the ramifications of it.

I'm sure I left out a few things....

[beachguy498]

I'm streamlining the process on my end. Going to be focusing on taking rather than giving and leech off the system as often as possible. This is what the next 4 years are all about, face it and accept your destiny.

Rob

[ljimd]

Next 4 years?????............now that my Social Security is secure..........think I'll eat a little more.

[beachguy498]

Next 4 years?????............now that my Social Security is secure..........think I'll eat a little more.

4 years, 3 months & 6 days until I'm 62 and can tap into it. Head to Costa Rica.. get a nice refrigerator box to live in, be livin' like a king.

Rob

[chrifive916]

Providing subsidies to farmers is a terrible practice, like with all subsidies it directs funds into a non-efficient enterprises (like growing tomatoes in the winter )

Btw, you might like reading Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson if you haven't. Covers how government economic intervention impacts markets and always makes them less efficient.

[drudixon]

Providing subsidies to farmers is a terrible practice, like with all subsidies it directs funds into a non-efficient enterprises (like growing tomatoes in the winter )

Btw, you might like reading Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson if you haven't. Covers how government economic intervention impacts markets and always makes them less efficient.

Depends. You can subsidize whatever you like. Fields have been converting to ethanol, and other fields have simply wilted due to drought. These two factors have done quite a bit to prices. We do need to do something to control food prices, subsidies is something I've liked in the past.

I'll check the book out, thank you.

[justboo2u]

Rewind the last year...


DRUDIXON for Pres!!!

Agree with 98% of everything in the OP, and can stand the other 2...
... until I come up with something better.

Works for me!