THE MARSTON CHRONICLES

If those of us who are opposed to the current administration and Congress let those same folks ingrain the idea in the body politic that we are merely obstructionist, we are doomed. To just say no is to say we support the status quo and are convinced that since nothing is broken, nothing needs fixing. There are many things in America that are broken and need fixing and everyone should agree on that. The argument is over how to fix what is broken.

Liberals think that the government can fix all these broken things if we will just give them the authority to do so. The rest of us know better because what has government ever done right? History shows that government screws up everything it touches beyond all reason and belief. Civil servants have no vested interest in getting things right. They are only interested in covering their asses so they can keep their position at the public trough. Individuals and competitive profit making business have a vested interest in getting it right.

We need a forum for our proposals on how to fix what is broken. General principles can be done easily such as the ones at: PUMA Coalition Positions. The problem is that philosophical positions are not grabbers with the general voting public as opposed to political activists. To convince the non-activists to join us requires that we have specific solutions to solve known problems. We are going to take a stab at offering some fairly radical ideas on providing these fixes in the order that they are important to the American People as delineated by Rasmussen Reports.

Government Ethics/Corruption (83%): Corruption and government are like Siamese twins. They go together and cannot be separated because as Lord Action noted: "Power corrupts and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely". Since those running the government have power, the lure of corruption is inevitable. It may just take the form of campaign contributions or political payoffs to those who helped them get elected. It can be more serious such as taking outright bribes. Congress people have been playing such games since Congress first came into being. The biggest source of corruption in government is lawyers. When lawyers get paid to opine on laws other lawyers have written it becomes a form of insider trading only worse. They already control one branch of government but letting them control two and sometimes three like they do now defeats the system of checks and balances that our founding fathers built into the Constitution. Shakespeare suggested that we should first kill all the lawyers but that is a bit too extreme.

Solution: There is no way that lawyers are ever going to agree to prevent anyone with a law degree from serving in Congress or as President or Vice-President. Since they are an overwhelming percentage of Congress, they would hardly ever agree to cut their own political throats. So the only way to rid the federal government of the lawyers is to take the decision out of their hands. State legislatures have a very small percentage of lawyers because the job does not pay well enough to attract lawyers. For those of you who have forgotten your civics in school, there is a way to get a Constitutional Amendment without going through Congress. All that is required is that three-fourths of the state legislatures pass the exact same request for a Constitutional amendment (38 states). It need only state: "No individual who has a law degree enabling them to practice law in any state or territory shall be qualified to serve as a member of Congress or as President or Vice-President beyond the current term they are serving at the time of the adoption of this amendment". Nothing less than a Constitutional Amendment will work because a law would be thrown out as unconstitutional by the courts all of whom are lawyers.

Economy (82%): Our whole system of government is built on the free enterprise system. It works fine until the government interferes with it. What business needs is to be free from uncertainty about what the government is going to do next to make a mess out of things. Any sign of more government interference causes business leaders to cut back on everything. They allow their inventories to drop very low, they stop expanding and worst of all they not only stop hiring but start laying people off causing a further contraction in the economy. The present economic depression was started when government lowered interest rates too low and started the housing boom. Then it raised them too high too fast and caused the system to crash. This might not have happened if Congress had not forced lenders to give mortgages to people who could not yet afford to make the payments. Like any such Ponzi scheme, it works great as long as real estate values go up and crashes and burns when they go down. By forcing Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac to back unsound mortgages they destroyed the housing market's stability.

Solution: We get things back on track by removing the uncertainty about what the government is going to do next to make things worse than they already are. The problem is that what government delivers can be taken away just as fast by Congress any time they feel like it. The only way to stop this is still another Constitutional Amendment that cannot be overturned.

This one needs to state: "No government established under the authority of this Constitution may directly intervene in the economy of the United States by artificially expanding or contracting the money supply of the economy. It may not seize, purchase or invest in or loan funds to any private business. It may not levy taxes at different rates on different types of businesses or by the amount of income they receive. It may not interfere with the supply or demand of any products or services nor attempt to fix the price of any such items. It may pass laws to prevent any individual or business from improperly interfering with the health and safety of any human being or to prevent individuals and businesses from interfering with market set prices, supply and demand. Any business transaction that covers a period of over six months that involves anything of monetary value shall be indexed by the cost of living as determined by procedures established prior to the adoption of this amendment."

This amendment allows governments to have laws from preventing people or businesses from interfering with the free flow of the market place through price fixing, gouging, monopolies, etc. The last provision removes the uncertainty due to inflation which is invariably caused by interference in the free market place. Now businesses know that they can proceed to make plans knowing they are free from unreasonable government interference and the uncertainty that such interference causes.

Health Care (73%): Health care in the United States is the best in the world but it costs too much. As usual a great part of that extra cost is because of government intervention into this market place already. Further government intervention is guaranteed to make the problem much worse and not better. Another problem is that too many American CITIZENS cannot get the health care they need. The problem is not a lack of health care but a lack of money to afford it when you need it. What really is an intolerable strain on an individual is not ongoing regular medical care but the cost of catastrophic medical care such as bypass surgery, transplants, etc.

Solution: To create competition in this market, we need to repeal statutes that prevent health insurance from being sold across state lines. Increased competition always benefits the consumer. The second approach is to lower the cost of health care by eliminating unnecessary expenses. Right now the biggest unnecessary expense is medical malpractice insurance due to frivolous lawsuits. Another part of this problem is caused by doctors ordering extra unnecessary tests to cover their asses in case they get sued. Many people advocate putting a cap on such awards (tort reform). That is merely putting a band-aid on the problem. Medical malpractice lawsuits should not be able to be filed unless the medical professional has been disciplined and/or lost his or her license in any state for shoddy practices.

A federal database needs to be created that lists all such medical professionals so they cannot go to another state and go right back to practicing medicine. As part of this reform, medical licensing boards need to get away from a slap on the wrist for medical malpractice. Once such board members realize that their malpractice insurance premiums will nosedive if they weed out the bad apples in their profession, they will get with the program. This will cost peanuts compared to the trillion dollars needed to just throw money at this problem but will also keep medical decisions in the hands of doctors and patients where they belong.

If the government is bound and determined to spend money on the catastrophic medical costs, there is no need to take over medical insurance. All that is required is a tax credit and not a deduction for the amount of those costs exceeding 10% of one's income. That means that the government will send the hospital a check to cover the cost of such operations just like it does now for Medicare. To cover the fact that you only file taxes once a year to get such a credit, a low rate of interest may be added to the bill. To cover the problem of preexisting medical problems, health insurance companies can be required to accept 5% of the total number of people they insure with such conditions at the same rates. There is a high risk pool for automobile insurance split among automobile insurance companies so why not the same for health insurance?

National Security/War on Terror (67%): There never has been a war that Democrats have overwhelming supported since World War II. Democrat Presidents have taken it upon themselves to personally run wars instead of letting the Pentagon do its job. Truman did this in Korea. Johnson did this in Viet Nam and Clinton did nothing about the steadily increasing attacks on this country. Now we have Obama dithering about giving his hand picked general what he has requested for Afghanistan. Obama has come right out and said that he is not interested in victory. This is unconscionable and totally insane. Once you have decided that there is no way to reign in a country or group of madmen through persuasion, you resort to force to protect your country. Once you commit lives and treasure to accomplish that end, you do not equivocate but do whatever it takes to win. Any other approach is a totally unnecessary waste of lives and money. As Barry Goldwater said 45 years ago in his book, Why Not Victory? That is how long this nonsense has been going on about not having the intestinal fortitude to carry on to victory in war once you start one.

Solution: We do not need new laws or constitutional amendments to solve this problem. All we need is a President who is totally committed to achieving victory once we are involved in a war. If you are not totally committed to giving the armed forces the necessary tools and manpower to win a war, then don't start one or fail to see one through to victory. War is what you resort to only if and when all else fails. You have to be totally dense not to defend yourself when you are attacked as we were on 9/11. You have to reduce the enemy to the point where they cannot ever do such a thing again no matter what it takes.

Social Security (65%): There are no shortcuts or easy solutions to this problem. Right now Social Security is no longer a retirement insurance program. It is nothing but an out and out Ponzi scheme. If a private company ran a retirement insurance program like Social Security is run, the government would put the company out of business and put the company officers in jail. As they say in the insurance industry, this program is actuarially unsound meaning it does not have sufficient reserve funds to meet its anticipated future costs. Actually it does not have any reserves at all because the federal government has borrowed all of the funds and left only IOU's in return. Once the young people paying into the fund put in less than is being paid out, then the government has to replace those IOU's with real money. By 2017, it will have done that with all of those IOU's and social security will be bankrupt.

Solution: There are only two ways to solve this problem: You either increase social security taxes to raise more money or you cut back on the benefits you are paying. Current Social Security and Medicare taxes are already 15.3% of your wages. Any increase in those taxes means you will have less to spend and further tank the economy. That leaves only cutting the benefits and the senior citizens are already not getting enough benefits to survive. So what to do? The only realistic solution is to cut down on the number of people to whom you are paying benefits. The only way to do that is to gradually raise the retirement age six months for every year that goes by until it reaches 70. People are living longer and working later in their lives. While we are doing that, we need to raise any government mandated retirement age from 65 to 70 immediately. While this is a painful fix, it actually adds only an extra six months to when a person who is about to retire can actually do so. Nothing else is going to fix this problem and anyone who tells you different has their head in the sand.

Taxes (62%): The way we tax businesses is totally ineffective, inefficient and counterproductive. We tax them on their net income. That encourages businesses to have no income that can be taxed. The only reason we collect any taxes on business at all is when the business is large enough to have stockholders who want a return on their investment. Because we tax the net income, businesses are always looking for creative bookkeeping which will allow them to expense items to lower their profits. That leads to a plethora of I.R.S. regulations about business lunches, company vehicles that cannot be used for personal use and if they are, a mileage log must be kept to separate the two, etc. We are actually subsidizing money losing companies by not only forgiving their taxes but also letting them carry their losses forward to later years when they are making money to lower their taxes. This is insane. Why do we want to subsidize businesses that are too inefficient to make money and penalize those that do?

Solution: Tax businesses on their gross income not their net. The utility company does not care if a business customer is making money or not; they expect to be paid anyway. Why should the government be any different? You pay a tax for the privilege of doing business in America on your gross revenues. Now instead of a huge percentage tax on net income we only need a small percentage tax on the gross to raise the same amount of money. This eliminates all of the games that businesses play since there is no advantage to "apparently" losing money. Now success in the form of profits is rewarded and not punished. Now shareholders get a much bigger return on their investment that they can put to work in creating new business opportunities and the jobs that go with them. You want the economy to get back on track? Here is part of the answer.

Education (59%): Public education in America is the world's most expensive day care center and produces graduates totally unprepared to succeed in the real world. This is because public education means government run education and that automatically means it is totally screwed up. Private education gets it right because if it does not get it right, it will lose students and revenue. Most private schools are run by religious organizations and that brings up separation of state and religion issues if the government effectively subsidizes such schools.

Solution: To create competition, parents should be able to decide which schools their children should attend and have that choice be publicly funded. To solve the separation of state and religion issue, we need a Constitutional Amendment that says: "Nothing in this Constitution shall prevent parents from sending their children to a school of their choice at public expense." That's it at just one sentence. Every child in America is entitled to an equal OPPORTUNITY to get a good education. There is no way to legislate equal education because you can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink. What we can do is see that there is an equal opportunity and we do that by legislating that every child gets the same amount of money towards that opportunity. We need to take every dime that is spent on education at the local, state and federal level and divide it by the number of school age children. That becomes the money given to parents for each of their children for education (and only education). If every child has an equal opportunity for a good education, why do we need a Department of Education to screw things up worse than they already are? Lets put the money we spend on it where it will do some real good.

Immigration (49%): Let's face it, our continental borders have more holes than Swiss cheese. Given that there are people trying to get into this country so they can kill Americans, ignoring this problem is a recipe for another 9/11 disaster. This should override all other concerns about immigration but it does not. Because most of the people teaming across our southern border are Hispanics from Mexico and parts south, to stop them from doing so would be ethnic discrimination in many people's minds. America has never had a problem with LEGAL immigrants. America would not be what it is today without them. The problem comes with illegal immigrants. Why should we welcome with open arms people who begin their stay by breaking our laws right from the get go? Not only that but when unemployment is running 10%, why do we want illegal immigrants taking any of the few jobs available?

Solution: We know from personally spending time with the Border Patrol in Southern California, touring the border with them and meeting with some of the Mayors of the border towns in Mexico like Tijuana how big this problem really is. The Border Patrol is undermanned, underfunded and outgunned. There is only one solution that has a realistic chance of cutting down on this flow: fund and build a serious border fence. Ever since the Israelis started building theirs over screams of horror from people not having to live with the fear with getting blown to smithereens, the incidence of attacks (other than rockets going over the fence) on Israelis have dropped drastically. Let's take a page out of their book and do the same.

War in Iraq (49%): A good argument can be made that we should never have invaded Iraq in the first place even without knowing that our intelligence on what Saddam Hussein was really up to was woefully wrong. We had a better case for invading Iran than Iraq because it really was working on nuclear weapons and still is. However that was then and this is now. At this point we have won this war thanks to the surge suggested by General Petraeus. Our casualties are down to what we can expect from deploying troops in peacetime. The war effort has now switched to Afghanistan, the so-called "necessary war" as opposed to Iraq. Some NATO allies are willing to consider sending more troops but we are not? No wonder some of them are ready to pack up and leave.

Solution: All we need is a President who realizes that prematurely withdrawing from Iraq is to lose a war we have already won. It does not matter whether we should have started this war because now we have a tiger by the tail and cannot let go without seriously damaging ourselves. The focus now needs to shift to repeating that same success in Afghanistan by doing whatever it takes to keep the Taliban from regaining control of that country.

Abortion (41%): There is no way to win on this one. We are asking the government to take one side or the other on what is basically a theological argument. Whichever way the government comes down, half of the people are going to be really mad. If you do not believe in God or in souls, then a fetus is nothing more than a tumor to be excised as needed. But if you do believe in souls, then it comes down to a theological argument as to exactly when the soul takes possession of the fetus. If it does so at conception, then the fetus is now a human being and to deprive it of life is to commit murder. The pro-choice folks need to understand that this is where the pro-life people are coming from and that it is a perfect legitimate position. However, if you do believe in souls and that they take possession with that first intake of breath, then a fetus is not a human being and aborting it while not a wise idea under any circumstances is definitely not murder. The pro-life people need to understand that given the beliefs or lack thereof of the pro-choice people that allowing the government to dictate what a woman cannot do with her own body is a serious curtailment of her freedom and a perfectly legitimate position.

Solution: We all need to recognize that their is no way to split the blanket (or baby from its mother in this case) and make everyone happy. All we can do is try to find a middle ground knowing that this will not making everyone happy but making things better than they are now. The only reasonable middle ground is to develop the concept of viability. Once a fetus has developed to the point of being able to sustain life on its own outside the mother, with or without mechanical help, the fetus becomes a human being and to kill it is premeditated murder and will be punished as such. No one gets what they want with this approach but it would at least do away with partial birth abortions. The Supreme Court was essentially enunciating this idea by only authorizing abortion in the first trimester. Why then is it legal to perform abortions past the first trimester?

Other issues may be covered as time permits...

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