Email Your Comments This website was started in 2007 with the basic solutions that are listed here.
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I have written a fiction screenplay that presents these ideas in the story and made it available here:
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Just to insure any doubters that I'm not exaggerating the crisis we are facing, here are some current news alerts:
The Bankruptcy of the United States is Now Certain
The party is over. Bankruptcy is next. A default is assured.It Is Now Mathematically Impossible To Pay Off The U.S. National Debt
Warnings of a U.S. Dollar Collapse
Americans must prepare themselves for a massive collapse in the dollar as investors around the world dump their US assetsDeficit Balloons Into National-Security Threat
"We've reached a point now where there's an intimate link between our solvency and our national security"
Flip the IRS to regulate federal spending: the first step to save our economy In the Blues Brothers movie, Rev. Cleophus James said "When I woke up this mornin', I heard a distubin' sound. What I heard... was the jingle-janglin'... of a thousand lost souls!"
I too have a disturbing feeling that something BAD is about to happen. I hear the disturbing sounds that our federal government is on track to fail.
The ONLY quick, non-violent, solution to fix the federal government is to
FLIP the IRS. Citizens are in the same situation as a person who's spouse is a drug addict with a joint bank account. Yes, our law makers are as out of control as a crack heads. They are on the road to self destruction and taking us down with them. That is the essence of our situation. Someone must say no and take away the checkbook and monitor their spending.
What would it do to professional and amateur sports if the referees and umpires "sold out" and made calls based on personal rewards? It would be the end of sports. Likewise the "bad calls" our elected officials are making, based on personal rewards, are destroying our nation. As Mark Twain noted, we have the best government that money can buy, we can see how that system is working out.
Since there is NO form of "instant replay" in government to correct "bad calls," the IRS must be directed to audit the federal government and given VETO power to eliminate waste, fraud, abuse and over payment BEFORE checks are written - with the same tenacity as they have audit citizens tax returns the past 100 years.
No one can deny that corruption, waste, fraud, mis-management and inefficiency has brought the American system of government PAST the tipping point. We are on a steep glide slope to total catastrophic economic failure and that is the ultimate threat to national defence.
The IRS is a very efficient and effective accounting firm. It has been the tool through which our elected officials have expanded government past the point citizens can sustain it's appetite. Why shouldn't it be reversed to shrink government and lessen our impending misery?
The IRS is a business - outside the government - that simply does whatever the party in power tells them to do. They don't care if you own the lawn mower repair shop down the street, or a successful entertainer like Willy Nelson, Richard Prior, Chuck Berry, Wesley Snipes a spiritual leader like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Reverend Sun Myung Moon, an athlete like Pete Rose, Darryl Strawberry, Boris Becker or the IRS commissioner himself, Joseph Nunan. They WILL take your property and put you in prison if they are instructed to.
Why shouldn't the IRS audit the government as vigorously as it does the citizens? The IRS reports that they prosecute about 3,000 cases per year. During a 4 year term in office the congress should look forward to being prosecuted 1,200 times. Each individual congressman of the 535 should look forward to 2.2 prosecutions per term in office.
We can't give the IRS this added responsibility and expect them to be efficient unless we reduce their work load. ...so we need to go to a sales tax method of tax collection so the IRS doesn't have to monitor 300 Million citizens but only retail businesses. A few guys on a bicycles in every state can ride around and make purchases and the receipts can be electronically verified every few months. Any business caught failing to report sales would get a warning first time then lose their licenses if it happens again. Sales taxes have worked efficiently to support state, county, city and local governments.
Excellent reading about the details of a flat tax: http://www.fairtax.org/site/PageServer?pagename=about_faq_answers
Why has congress always opposed a sales tax? Could it be because they don't want to free up the resources of the IRS to monitor THEIR programs and affairs?
Giving the IRS the task of only monitoring sales tax should free up 85 to 90% of their work force to audit elected official's "contributions" and the government programs they have established - to eliminate waste fraud corruption and abuse.
Rather than monitoring 300 million Americans they only have to monitor and a few thousand retail businesses and 537 congressmen (including Pez and vice prez) making their job almost a million times easier.
Even though it's more complicated to monitor fraud and abuse in government programs, the IRS has sufficient work force to do it if they don't have to monitor the individual incomes and expense deductions of millions of citizens.
It's no secret that most elected officials have made some "mistakes" and were lured into "shady" deals. So we need to be generous and give them a few months to clean up their act, pay back ill gotten gains and "come correct."
If the light is turned on in a roach ridden kitchen the roaches scatter... but even after 15 minutes there are still many of them that are confused and still running around in the light, waiting to be squashed.
There will be many "cockroach" politicians who are left scampering around in the light even after their grace period has expired. They may be confused, thinking it's just business as usual and that they are still above the law... so they will need to be locked up.
When a powerful politicians has to be locked up they won't go down alone. Their will be taking many of their cronies going with them. So we need a plan to free up prison space.
I suggest we make prison space by paroling drug users. Since it is peer pressure that gets everyone started using drugs we should use peer pressure to help them overcome their addictions. Let's let them out, with GPS ankle bracelet, in groups of 5. Every week they have to report back and all pee in the same cup. If the drug test fails they all go back to jail. I think there is a strong probability that they will keep each other clean.
If the IRS audits Medicare there will be no more purchases of items such as a wheel chair for $3,000 when the fair market price is only $1,000. We know the IRS can catch 1 out of 300 million Americans using a personal restaurant receipt as a business expense... they can easily find the waste and fraud in government programs. They won't allow Halliburton to charge the taxpayers $200,000 just to put an HB monogram on towels the military uses for hand rags... and other such abuse. HalliburtonWatch.org
There is one undeniable absolute fact: Stuff happens to EVERYTHING man has made and without a "self correcting mechanism" failure is eminent.
If we don't do something we are certainly doomed to EXTREME misery. Maybe we can start by voting AGAINST EVERY incumbent. When they are all removed there is a better chance we can get fiscal responsibility.
Where would you find ANY CITIZEN who thinks it's a bad idea to audit government officials and the spending of our taxes - as closely as their own personal finances are monitored? Doesn't seem to be impossible if we want it.
We only have to decide to make this one vote - to flip the IRS - is THE qualification for a senator to get elected. It's that simple... or we can sit around and let the government fail and take the entire financial/banking system down with it.
When that happens, what "currency" will be an alternative? The US government has fought vigorously to eliminate any alternative currency options.
Federal Reserve Cracks Down on Alternative Private Currency
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/114574/ us_dollar_vs_liberty_dollar_federal.html
All over the third world, paper U.S. dollars function as a shadow currency. Where is our "shadow currency?" I just don't know. Perhaps an alternative would be for citizens to form a company and use the company STOCKS as an alternative currency. Companies already do this and since big business runs the federal reserve, they may not be able to restrict the use of stocks as an alternative currency without cutting their own throats?
Here is a blog site that discusses alternative currency issues:
http://webofdebt.wordpress.com/
Rep. Paul Kanjorski explains on C-Span how $550 Billion disappeared "Electronically" in an hour or two, in a run that almost "ended our economic and political system." The video has been pulled from youtube and most other websites. Maybe you can still see it here:
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ca2_1234032281
I would suggest that with the current fragile economic climate, it may be time to start thinking and planning on a larger scale than preparing a first aid kit and stockpiling some canned goods.
This brings us back to the discussion on how to save the system and make federal spending accountable:
If you made $2,000 a month and you were spending $3,000 per month you would only go deeper into debt and eventually you would be financially ruined. If you had $12,000 debt EVEN if you cut your spending in HALF and paid $500 a month toward your debt, it would take 24 payments to pay the principle and about 30 to 40 more payments to pay off the interest. You would not be out of debt for 70 payments.
The federal government is in this exact situation. Instead of $12 thousand dollars they have a $12 TRILLION debt and their budget for next year is OVER 3 trillion dollars... they only collect $2 trillion in taxes per year. So EVEN if the Federal Government CUT THEIR BUDGET IN HALF, it will take over 70 years to get out of debt. Does anyone think federal spending will be cut in half?
NO they won't cut spending... projections came out today that there would be 9 trillion MORE dollars in debt added over the next 10 years. They are rapidly destroying the nation. Terrorist only have to wait.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the federal government will fail in 19 years. Within 10 years the interest on the debt will be larger than military spending, which in reality makes up 54% of the budget.
With high unemployment and the middle class getting pushed down into poverty, there will be far less taxes collected than the government is projecting. The financial situation is much worse than reported. We must flip the IRS to audit the federal government and stop wasting our valuable resources.
"[T]he richest 1 percent of Americans pay taxes at an average rate of 5.2 percent of their income. Middle-class residents, on average, pay taxes at a rate of 9.4 percent, and the poorest 20 percent pay at a rate of 10.9 percent."
In the past years, since the Reagan administration, small business have not only had strong global competition but they have had been oppressed by taxes and regulations from their own government. This has put small businesses at a serious disadvantage with foreign competitors. Many foreign countries actually subsidize their businesses.... while our government oppressed them.
Results, over the past few decades hundreds of thousands of business have closed or move overseas... leaving unemployment behind.
But the people and the talent is still here. Sometimes all a business needs to spout and grow is for the government to get out of the sunlight. The current administration has put forth a bill to add 8% more taxes on the businesses of America. That will only squeeze more companies out of business and raise unemployment.
We can't tell congress they can't pass laws but someone must stand up and say that in the name of national defense we can't finance waste and abuse.
If we are forced to strip naked - via xray vision - when we board a ship or airplane or enter a federal building... in the name of national defense, why can't we say no to the abuse of our tax dollars ...in the name of national security?
Regulate political contributions. Here is the problem: "The government is a system where elected officials set their own rules, are their own advisers, are their own investigators, are their own prosecutors, are their own judges, and are their own jurors." This is the best recipe for corruption one could imagine.
It's no secret that politicians are BOUGHT by big business through campaign and lobbyist donations. Once "bought" they are no longer on the side of the citizens they have take an oath to serve.
About once year we see headlines like this: "Lawmakers move to cut lobbyists' influence."
Here is an example: USA TodayThen we read in the NY Times: "Senate Approves Lobbying Limits by Wide Margin"
But WAIT... read the article: "The bill does little to break the link between lobbyists and lawmakers' money-raising machines, because senators decided that those issues related to campaign finance, not lobbying. As a result, the bill steers clear of regulating the fund-raising activities of lobbyists, some of whom help run political action committees of the same lawmakers they hope to influence."
"The measure would not ban private travel or the ability to fly on corporate jets at heavily discounted rates. The measure would not do away with earmarks and the Senate overwhelmingly rejected, 30 to 67, a move to create an independent ethics office to investigate accusations of abuse."Conclusion: It was a waste of time and nothing more than smoke and mirrors, designed from the onset to deceive the public.
If we address this fundamental problem we could solve a large number of problems and raise the standard of living for all our citizens that are not involved in this corruption.
Expand and enforce antitrust laws to reduce price fixing of essentials goods. Businesses were once fair, when run by moral people, however after the first 100 years since the birth of our nation it had become clear that antitrust regulations had to be put into law to protect consumers. The work of Theodore Roosevelt and the following Taft administration was instrumental in keeping our nation's commerce working for another 100 years. However we are in an even more corrupt time and more laws have to be established and enforced out of necessity.
Every system that survives does so because of a self correcting mechanism. With the current system, lawmakers are paid to permit businesses that provide essential goods and services to cheat the consumers. This can't continue without fatal results.
Introduction: Laws and locks are only needed for an immoral society.
There are three major components of every society, citizens, government and commerce, and when morality fails all three areas must be regulated. Without a self-correcting mechanism the republic will fail.
The commerce system fails because greed for profit drives business to take unfair advantage of consumers, especially in industries connected with essential goods and services - such as health, energy and banking.
The solution is the establishment and enforcement of antitrust laws by the government to regulate profit margins of essential goods and services and protect consumers.
The government fails because elected officials become corrupt by bribes and kickbacks and use their power to unfairly tax citizens and over regulate industries forcing them to pass on costs to citizens.
The solution is to give regulatory, veto power to an independent accounting firm like the IRS to stop checks before they are written and to insure tax payer's money is efficiently and justly used.
Citizens add to the decline of the nation because they fail to vote patriotically with their dollars and purchase foreign goods, driving the nation into debt.
The solution is to levy tariffs on foreign goods so that domestic industries can compete. Free trade has to be fair trade, trade neutrality with other nations.
National public service program for all American young people. Poor ethics is not only a problem of government but a big problem with the citizens. Nationwide, the US incarcerates more than 2 million people at an estimated yearly cost of over 40 billion dollars. 30 billion dollars is needed to build and operate additional prisons.
Since 1995 tax payers spent more money to build and maintain prisons than colleges. Prisoners who advance their education are 3 times LESS likely to return to prison. Every inmate serving a life sentence cost tax payers 1.5 million dollars.
Reduction in the crime rated should start with educating our young people. At high school graduation, or no later than 18 years of age, every young person should be required to enter a 4 year public service program where teamwork, self discipline are taught and drug use - including smoking - would not be allowed.
Basic reading and writing (English) and math skills would be required in order to graduate. During their public service they could do voluntary work and work on their College degree or support our military or learn a trade by doing voluntary work for a small business where in return for their labor they would be taught a trade. This would help small businesses succeed. Men AND women would be required to participate. A successful society takes care of their young even if it requires some "tough love."
The MAIN reason that America enjoyed great success in recent decades is largely due to the military training from the World Wars our parents and grandparents fought. In the military they were taught discipline and loyalty that translated to companies and businesses. In absence of that training we see how reluctant workers are to be loyal to their companies and we see businesses screw the workers when the only thing that matters is the short term quarterly profits.
"Cool it" on global warming Global warming is a big big big money maker for an industry trying to sell expensive equipment. This industry pays politicians to force businesses to purchase their products for high profits. Over regulation will happen and the only results is that it will drive US industry overseas - out of the reach of expensive US regulations - while taking jobs AND taxes with them.
As verified and reported by many news agencies, there has been NO global warming since 1998. In fact the climate has cooled slightly in the last 10 years. Read the full report.
No one who believes the Bible could accept the concept that the polar caps will melt and the earth will be flooded. Because God promised after Noah's flood: "The waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh." Then the rainbow appeared as a token of the covenant.
The military solutions should FIRST consider relocating people caught up in conflict and establishing buffer zones - BEFORE sending in stealth bombers and destroying an entire region -- at the expense of TRILLIONS of dollars and the loss of human lives and health. In 2005 Ted Turner (CNN founder) publicly gave his support, and financial backing to this idea.
Peace in the Middle East Like most Americans it is very difficult for me to understand why so many Islamic people hate us to the point they are willing to become a suicide terrorist and die just to kill a few of our people or our allies, knowing their actions will bring down the wrath of the strongest military force in the world on their own people.
Perhaps it has something to do with our relation with Israel. Ahmadinejad demanded that "Israel must be wiped off the map" in a public broadcast and that seems to be the attitude of the majority of Arabic world. No one can find or offer any solution to the violence, so Israel is getting bombed every few days.
Who would want to live, raise their children, work and run a business in that environment?
Maybe it's time to sell out and leave?
If the Arabs want them gone so badly, why would it be impossible to think that someone couldn't broker a buyout?
No one could ask them to sell out and leave their homeland and where would they go?...but a few things to consider:
First, it wouldn't be the first time the Jewish people left their homeland for a better life and preservation of their lineage, there is an entire book in the Bible called Exodus about another time.
Their ancestors made the sacrifice and did it then for their sake. Maybe they would be willing to make a sacrifice again for the sake of their children and for the sake of world peace?
This time they could leave with the wealth they had accumulated rather than a few items tied up in a rag on a stick and no road map.
It's just a matter of time before Iran gets the atomic bomb and drops it on them, killing everyone anyway.
Who would welcome them? Perhaps a nation founded on the notion of giving us your tired, you poor and your hungry may still have enough of that founding spirity to welcome intelligent, educated, refuges, bringing us back suitcases full of our money we spent on Middle East oil?
Would you rather have a "Jew" as your neighbor - or burry your parents, spouses and children? Ask the 30,000+ American citizens who lost a parent, child or spouse on 9/11 and in the war in the middle east since.
There is almost enough vacant real estate available in Las Vegas and Pittsburgh alone to take in half the population of Israel. I have a feeling the real estate agents and banks across America would be delighted to close some deals with customers with cash.
Many many Jewish people will refuse to leave, but so were the people of Siagon until the last few days. Then they were hanging on the wings of airplanes. It's not likely that anyone will know when Iran will drop the bomb, and we would be remiss to pretend we can do anything to prevent it.
Sooner or later we have to face the reality that we can't save everyone. We have already given up on saving the lives of MILLIONS of children right here in America that are homeless, abused, starving, sick and getting murdered. Why must we continue to send our finest young men and women to die for a cause that will eventually be abandoned anyway? ...and possible end in total annihilation of the people we are ultimately trying to defend? It would be inhumane NOT to offer the Jewish people a refuge before we abandon the middle east.
We know the violent sect of Islam wants them gone. The housing market needs someone to save it. The Jewish people need to preserve their lineage. We want to get our sons and daughters out of harm's way and remove the fear of terrorism and stop wasting our limited resources.
Is there any other pragmatic plan that has any chance of saving a nation while getting out of a Jihad war? What's the big deal about moving anyway? MORE than half (56%) of Americans who lived in inner cities have moved to the suburbs in just the past few decades. We are all floating on a rock through space. Is latitude and longitude really that important?
Ok.. I know what you are thinking... what will they do when they get here? They will need jobs. Almost 1 million Vietnamese Refugees came here in the middle 70's and no one seemed to hardly notice. And they were very poor and uneducated. Israel is one of the most educated and wealthiest nations in the world. It would stand to reason that their presence would probably enhance any nation they lived in - and bring new technology and jobs to it. We already are aware of the contributions of a few Jewish people like Oppenheimer who gave America the military superiority of the atomic bomb, Albert Einstein, countless leaders, educators, entertainers and let's not forget Jesus Christ.
All we need is 60 selfless citizens - not professional politicians - who would go to Washington and restore accountability with the tools and resources that are already there.
Thank you, Terry Blount