Laws that Need Changed at the Federal Level

There are so many things that have happened over the last year that we thought could never happen in the United States.  It prompted me to try to come up with "to-do list" for when the sanity returns to America.  These are legislative actions or policies that will need to be corrected when there are people who care about solving problems back in elected office.

1. If you want to run for President of the United States, you must release your complete tax return for the last 5 years to be on the national ballot.  When you file for any Presidential primary, you must hand over your tax returns to that state and that Secretary of State will publish those for all to see. 
2. The Logan Act is punishable by 5 years in jail if you attempt as a private citizen to negotiate with a foreign country the United States foreign policy including in the period of time before taking office.  Also, receiving money or information (which is a commodity and has a value) from a foreign government during a federal election is illegal. A candidate must report information or any other donation from a foreign entity to the FBI.
3. A President needs to put all his investments and businesses into a blind trust while she serves the United States to avoid problems with the emoluments clause of the Constitution. 
4. Voting is the fundamental basis of democracy and every citizen has a right to vote.  States shall not put unreasonable obstacles in the way to voting.  They should automatically register every citizen and eliminate any unreasonable barrier to casting a ballot.  If the cure for keeping people from voting is worse than the illness (voter fraud) don't do it. This may need to be a Constitutional amendment to assure compliance.  Also, felons who have completed their term should vote in federal election across the United States. 
5. Federal judges can no longer be life time appointments.  They need to come back for a check-in/reappointment by the Congress every 10 years. The Senate will need to vote to reconfirm all federal judges or justices every 10 years in a timely manner. 
   
6. There needs to be a deadline for the Senate to take up a nomination for service in the Executive Branch or the judiciary.  If the Senate does not meet the deadline then that means that they are choosing not to provide advice and consent, the judge, justice or executive branch nominee takes their office.  
7. The Executive Branch must make an appointment for a vacancy in the judiciary or executive branch political appointments within two months of a vacancy.  Not filling a position in the Executive Branch is harmful to the country and is contrary to the wishes of the Congress.  
8. Guns are not a human right.  Government has a right to restrict access and there should be an extensive background check for those who want to own a gun. 
9. Anyone who wants to serve in the US Military should be allowed to if they can pass basic training.  They should be able to serve free of discrimination no matter their gender identity, sexual orientation, religion or national origin.  
10. Police are not an occupying military institution.  They are in place to preserve the peace, and any investigation of abuse or physical harm shall be investigated by the judicial branch of government not the executive branch. 
11. If you serve in the US military or the national service for two years then a public four year college is free. 
12. College debt is a drag on our economy.  If you work in a human service or public education for 8 years after not for profit college all your debt is forgiven. 
13. Incarceration should be a means to re-educate and incorporate a citizen back into society.  All policies should be designed to re-integrate a person back to again become an asset to our society in the shortest and utilizing the best practices as possible. 
14. The United States does not engage in torture.  If the United Nations determines an activity is torture then it is illegal in the United States. 
15. By the way, the United Nations is an important entity to keep the peace.  The US shall fully engage the United Nations committees including UNESCO and Human Rights committee and shall adopt the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 
16. If you violate the Hatch Act twice as determined by the Ethics office you are expelled from your position within the Executive Branch. 
17. Access to the internet is a public utility and needs to be universal. Government is encouraged to provide access to those areas in which the private sector finds the cost unreasonable.  The private sector that offers connection to the internet must operate in a neutral manner with every individual, non-profit, government entity and corporation equal. Access to the Internet is not a profit driven industry.
18. The White House is the people's house and shall be operated in the most transparent way possible with everything that is not classified as top secret needs to be released to the public including visitor logs, communication within the building, photos and information distributed within the building.
19. All information released on social media by the President is the official policy or position of the President.
20. The President shall not lie to the American people and this line should be added to the oath of office. 
    
21. A President cannot launch nuclear weapons unless there was a first strike from another country.  In order to launch nuclear weapons the full national security advisory must agree without any dissension.  
22. The Justice Department is not loyal to the President of the United States.  The head of the Justice Department and the FBI are selected by the President, but cannot be removed by the President without the 4 out of the 5 members of the legal advisory to include House and Senate Judicial Committee chairpersons, the Vice President, and the Solicitor General.
23. Corporations are not people.  All federal elections are public going forward because money corrupts the process.  If you want to comment on public policy or a candidate in the public sphere you have to disclose who is paying every dollar of that commentary in an easily accessible public place.  
24. The Federal Election Commission is totally broken and needs to be given some degree of independence from politics and some quick way to keep federal elections fair. 
25. Gerrymandering is illegal.  Independent commissions outside the political process shall derive districts that are compact, competitive and not dominated by political parties. 
    
26. All primary elections shall be open with the top two proceeding to the General Election.  Citizens should be required to vote or they would pay a higher tax rate.  The citizen should be allowed to vote for "none of the above." If none of the above gets 35% of the vote in any federal election a new election is called within 30 days with two new candidates selected that represent the party of the top two vote-getters from the primary.   
27. There should be a Constitutional amendment that the air, water, and power shall be clean and water shall be potable for every citizen.  Air, Water and Power shall not be distributed for profit by a business.  We need to work to reduce threats to polluting our natural resources not adding to that contamination--we are looking at you coal burning power plants. 
28. Our goal should be to have the Department of Peace (State Department) better funded than the Department of War (Defense Department). 
29. Tear down the walls of fear and hate that exist in our country.  Immigration is critical to the survival of the United States.  Immigrants bring new ideas, jobs, and new cultural traditions to the United States.  As a world leader, we need to revamp our immigration system to encourage the best and brightest along with the persecuted and tortured to join the American melting pot.  
30. Education and Health care are essential to a functioning democracy and both shall be considered a human right free to those living in the United States.  Private entities (non-profit entities) can administer a school or healthcare facility but cannot charge the citizen for those services.  Corporations cannot make a profit from education, power generation, power distribution or medical necessary health care. 
31.  
    
    Housing is also a human right and every citizen born or naturalized into the United States deserves to live inside.  Basic housing with privacy is a public utility that should be provided to every member of our society. Artists are important to our society and should not have to live outside to exist.  If you want more elaborate or better housing that is your right, but we should not have people living outside or in places not fit for human habitation.  This means that every county or parish in the United States needs to provide housing to its citizens or those communities cannot expect assistance from the federal government for homelessness.
32. Those disabled in our country should be provided a housing voucher, income that gets them to 80% of the poverty rate and should not have a prohibition on the amount of outside income that they can earn. 
33. Everyone should contribute a portion of their income to the Social Security system even the incredibly wealthy should give a percentage of that wealth to make the safety net secure. 
34. The Federal Trade Commission should be wrapped into the Consumer Protection Bureau with its current independence and ability to act against businesses that are harming consumers. 
35. The US should go on a two year budget cycle and the Congress members should add to their oath of office, "We will work on a fair budget process that does not involve continuing resolutions." 
36. Everything produced must be recyclable and the place that sells you the consumer item must be able to take the packaging and item back for reuse.  
    
37. Pass whistleblower protections to safeguard the publication of anonymous sources in a free press.  Government needs to be more transparent by publishing everything they generate in a timely manner to keep citizens engaged in the Democratic process.  We need to work on a process to stabilize a free and independent media without reliance on corporate or business interests contaminating or interrupting publication. 
38. Inherited fortunes are not good for democracy.  Americans should earn their wealth and then turn a high portion of that wealth back to the free society that put in place the infrastructure to be able to make that money. 
39. Corporations should pay a quarter of their profits without exceptions and without hiding those profits in other countries for the benefit of being able to sell their goods and services in a free society that features a strong infrastructure. It should be taught in school that hiding money from government is unpatriotic and cause for eviction from a free society.  I am sure that the former Soviet countries would accept immigrant from the United States convicted of hiding their wealth.  
40. Science and exploration are incredibly important to the future of America.  The federal government should fund research and should reform the patent and trademark process to encourage innovation and not stifle using lawsuits. 

I am sure that I missed critical issues and I will try to update this list.  There is a lot of work to do after a period of 20 years of neglect by the legislative branch of government.  Our society must acknowledge that government can solve problems and we the people have the power to make life better for all.  

Brian Davis

Don't Forget About Puerto Rico

Much of Northern Puerto Rico was cast again into darkness as a major transmission line failed.  Whitefish Energy had worked on this powerline according to Huffington Post.  According to FEMA 43% of the island's population had their power restored and when this transmission line went down that dropped to 18%.  By the end of Thursday, that number had increased to 25%, but that means that three fourths of the population did not have power.

The meek Governor of Puerto Rico was on 60 Minutes this last week.  This has got to be tough for Governor Ricardo Rossello.  He has to walk a tough line between insulting his patrons from the federal government and sticking up for his people.  From this interview, it seems he has made the calculation not to criticize the federal government for the inability to establish water or electricity.  This seems to me to be a good strategy after a week or maybe two weeks, but nearly two months later is crazy.  His people are being treated as second class citizens and he does not seem to care.  Governor Rosello has to be concerned that he is going to be the Ray Nagin of this disaster if he is not careful.  The San Juan Mayor is regularly complaining about the slow response and will most likely end up on the good side of history.  If Governor Rossello does not step up his game, he is going to look like an apologist for federal ineptitude.

FEMA is helping to clear out the island.  Many papers ran story about FEMA relocating people to the mainland.  Remember, people in NYC after Sandy spent years in hotels.  There is some debate if this is new or just seems new because people have to travel so far off the island. This should help reduce the population which some estimates has more people on the mainland than currently live on the island.  How would living in a motel in New York City help?  They would have to get a job in NYC and then why would those individual return to Puerto Rico.

The US Army has said that they are beginning to draw down the number of troops in Puerto Rico which is strange since not everyone has power or electricity.  The military officials were assuring the public that their job was over--clearing roads. I guess we know now why it took so long to fix Iraq after we broke it with our fool hearty invasion.  The military does not have the capability to rebuild a community.  They can only clear roads and everything else is up to someone else.  They must have no ability to fix water systems or restore power to a city.  When I was in Puerto Rico, I saw the US military sitting around the convention center drinking coffee, talking and riding around with their emergency lights on.  I thought the military was not supposed to leave until the job is done.  The New York Times also reported that Abner Gomez, the commissioner of the Puerto Rico Emergency Management Agency had resigned.   "It was unclear whether Mr. Gómez’s resignation was an indication that the government had recognized a failure in its response to Hurricane Maria, or that he had simply lost influence at the agency. Mr. Gómez’s profile had diminished this year when the governor created a cabinet position over him."

Don't forget to send your care packages to Puerto Rico since they are now down to 75% of the island without power.  They need your help.

Undermining Trust in Government

I am not a big fan of the Rachel Maddow Show as the host of an information program--too much talking by the host, but last night she had a really good segment that I have been thinking about for a long time.  Here is the description of the video from their website. 

Trump doing a bad job turning word into deed

Rachel Maddow points out an emerging pattern in the Donald Trump administration in which the declarations Trump makes are not supported by the work to get those thing done, most egregiously in the case of the Russia sanctions he signed into law but never

THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW

10/26/17

DURATION: 21:59

They do not make it easy to link to a specific video on the MSNBC website for some reason.  Maddow makes the point that this new administration is just not doing their job.  They are falling down on the job from their pathetic response to the opioid drug crisis to the release of the JFK information.  This is one of the problems with Maddow's show.  She spent 21 minutes explaining this concept, but most American's do not have the attention span for 20 minutes.  Her commentary should have been written and published with a discussion about the highlights on her show with some expert, but that is just my opinion.  Here is a summary of the list of the items that she touched on:

• The JFK files were mandated by law to be released by October 26, 2017 and yet on the day of the release they withheld most of the documents.  This law was passed in 1992 and so the federal government had 25 years to protect some of these documents, but the administration waited until the last day to look at what they were releasing.
• FEMA has a disaster plan for a hurricane striking Puerto Rico, but they will not release it.  Maddow points out that either they are not following it or it is not a real plan.  
• The Opioid Crisis was declared a "national emergency" in August and another 10,000 people have overdosed since the President spoke those words.  Today, the federal government  declared a few steps below a national emergency instead proclaiming a "public health emergency." This comes without money or the urgency by all departments, and is not as significant as the national emergency declaration. 
• The federal government has not put in place the sanctions against Russia which were due on October 1.

Maddow focuses on how the media is not wired to cover a President who does not follow through on proclamations and hype.  I believe that there  is a bigger issue and that is calculated strategy to undermine confidence in the Federal government.  Maddow presents a good list, but it is much longer of big issues that they are neglecting:

• Despite all the fanfare about how well the recovery effort is going in Texas and Florida, the flooded and wind damaged homeowners are having to wait three hours on the phone everyday to get help from FEMA.  
• The large number of staff positions throughout the government vacant causes the executive branch to not be able to function properly.  There was a reason to put in place a deputy secretary of housing at HUD, and all those functions are neglected at this time.
• Springing travel bans and refugee policies on departments causes chaos in the airports, travel industries, and customs offices. 
• We have not seen any help for our ailing infrastructure including the water system in Flint Michigan or preventing forest fires or repairing the Metro in DC and Subway in NYC.
• The routine undermining of the nation's health care system undermines one sixth of the nation's economy.  
• The repeated attacks on the nation's voting system based on lies and exaggerations.  

Along with the issues Maddow mentioned, there is a clear pattern of making our government look incompetent.  I believe that is a way to fulfill the Reagan dream of cutting the federal budget by demonstrating its incompetence.  No one is going to care if the inept FEMA is destroyed and we outsource disaster response to small companies in rural Montana.  Think how much we could save if we destroyed the Department of Health and Human Services and turned all their functions over to the states.  If personal income taxes can be submitted on a post card and the staff delayed approving tax exempt status for alleged right wing "charitable" organizations, do we really need an Internal Revenue Service?  

This is an example of the members of the Executive Branch going after the very government that employ them.  It is like hiring a guy to be your CEO who publicly proclaimed that your company should be put out of business.  Who would do that?  Or who would put a guy who sued that department more than anyone else in charge of that agency unless they were trying to undermine it? There is a war going on against the federal government and we have a fifth column in charge of that government.  I believe that the person in charge is inept, but those within the government know exactly what they are doing destroying the government from inside.  

by Brian Davis

Gibson Guitar CEO Becomes Tea Party Cause

by Max Johnson

Gibson Guitar was raided by the US Fish and Wildlife Service for using illegally exported rosewood from India. The government raided the facility shutting it down.  The CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz, has become a star in the fantasy world of the Tea Party for railing against laws that destroy jobs.  He was even invited to attend the Obama Jobs Speech as a sign of support by the Corporate party.  He is claiming that he received no warning of any infraction before the raid, and it cost his company $1 million then $2 million or even $3 million, as well as prevented him from hiring 14 additional American workers.  In a time of terror over the unstable jobs market, using the jobs defense is the ultimate trump card.

This is all really silly, and can be easily smacked down.  All the Justice Department has to say is, "If you folks out there in the frontier justice world of the tea party allow Gibson Guitar to make some guitars out of "Lady Liberty" the 2,000 year old Cypress Tree down in Florida and the Auburn Oak which was recently poisoned on the campus of the University of Auburn, we will drop the case against Gibson."   This would shut up these loons who so hate government that they will lionize a corporation engaged alleged illegal activity.  Cut down Lady Liberty and we see how they scream for government regulations.

Gun Violence

Violence in America

by Max Johnson

I thought that it was interesting that the right wing is extremely nervous about this shooting in Arizona. They seem to be going out of their way to deflect blame. They have gone out of their way to point out that the alleged killer was left wing and that there is no evidence he listened to radio or watched television. It does not matter to me that this man in Arizona was liberal or conservative. He was violent, and he had easy access to a weapon. There is so much violence in our society, and we see it everyday in the rhetoric used by many of the hardcore in the United States.

This alleged killer was at his core anti-government, which is extremely popular at this time. The video of this young man walking around Pima Community College declaring it "illegal under the Constitution" and "fascist." There are so many who condemn government every day and sometimes in the most hostile and violent manner. I do not understand this thinking. The government is us. "We the people, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility...do ordain and establish this Constitution." It was with these words that a new form of government was adopted and survived for the past 230 years. These rants against government are hostile to "we the people." They feed the deranged and those seeking fame. The extreme rhetoric embolden the misguided to fixate on public officials. While this leads to short term electoral gains, it harms the soul of the country. It does cause many of our best and brightest to leave public service. We the people are weakened because of this drum beat of anti government rhetoric. It prays on the fears and anger and resentment within our society, while ignoring the great things that we the people do.

The attack on government ignores the cure of polio and the extending life to those stricken with HIV/AIDS. We the people were able to land on the moon, and slip the bounds of surly bonds of earth with the space shuttle program. The United States government explores the oceans and other uncharted portions of our earth. They administer the beautiful national parks service and the national weather service which most of the time can warn people of impending disaster. The prevention of a second Great Depression in 2008 and the ability to manufacture cars with two competing car companies within the United States must be credited to the government of the United States. The defense against evil that had swept into the ruins of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s and across Europe in the 1930s are all US government led operations. Ohio State, Michigan, Rutgers, UCLA, and the University of Washington are all government institutions that are the breeding ground for major advancements in science, literature, and engineering. Our libraries, schools, and even our roads are all part of government acting in concert with the people. The ability travel by car, bus, airplane and boat with some sense that you will not die are in a large part thanks to government. I could go on for hours demonstrating the value of our government.

The point is that ratcheting down the rhetoric or acting civil is not the only answer. We need to condemn attacks on our government with violent revolutionary language. This should not be tolerated by media, government officials, or the public.