If I were the president of the USA, things would be different. (Note: I'd never get elected & I'm not interested in the job) Here's how.

1) Throw out the IRS and the income tax. We should tax consumption, not income, and this could easily be addressed with a National Sales Tax. This would open the door for some sensible use-based taxes: For example, roads should be repaired out of a state or county gas tax.

2) The USA is in an awesome position of military strength and influence in the world. We don't need to continue blowing through hundreds of billions of dollars annually on Defense (close to the amount the ROW spends!). We could cut that by a factor of 2 or 3 and *still* have the biggest and best military in the world. I'd prefer an army of 1 million special forces with high-tech gear. Down the road, if we still feel the need for a national program that uses young people, revive the C.C.C.

3) We've got to shake the oil habit. Our weakness - our Achilles' Heel - is this reliance on a non-domestic energy source. We could take some of the DoD savings and apply it to Fusion research. For electrical energy, it's pretty clear that (currently) nuclear has the smallest footprint on the biosphere - the fact that we aren't able to build a new nuclear plant today due to lawsuits from 'environmental' groups is ludicrous & I'd work to enable a series of new plants. For transportation energy (a gas substitute) - maybe it is Hydrogen (though I doubt it). Maybe it is electric. Maybe it is Boron - (visit the site, there's a lot of interesting information there). Who knows - we need to study the problem rationally, and unfortunately, step 1 of doing it rationally is getting the (non) environmental groups like GreenPeace, Sierra Club, etc., away from the problem.

While we're in the process of doing the above, we need to make sure we're taking all reasonable steps to use oil as efficiently as we can in the interim. This means higher average mileage guidelines for cars, *not* allowing SUVs to skirt them on a cheap definition issue, etc.

Allocating a few billion per year to investment in future energy technology would be an enormous increase over what we're investing today. I think this is important enough to get 1% of the federal budget (I think it's much more important than that - but I don't know that we need to spend more.)

4) Foreign aid. We currently give billions of $ away for no darn good reason to countries like Egypt. Stop that.

5) Foreign aid part 2: The talking heads on TV always make it sound like Democracy is the answer for any country. No way... I think that freedom of speech and freedom of the press are more important & need to be done before any populace votes. So - we could have foreign-aid incentives for these and other important rights that limit the power of the government. There's a whole armature of individual rights and government limitations that needs to exist before the right to vote is meaningful. After over 200 years, I think the Founding Fathers - especially James Madison - were geniuses to set things up the way they did.

The overarching goal of any government should be to improve the lot of the average person in the street over the long term. This will translate to different things in different cultures - but Madison's guide of avoiding concentrated power in one political office is key.

I am excited by the potential of the Internet to provide a de facto freedom of the press. Any time I want to get a perspective from another country, I can surf onto sites like www.pravda.com or english.aljazeera.net for a different viewpoint. [yes I'm aware that those sites are biased!]

6) Take existing drunk-driving penalties and multiply by 10. For 2-time losers, cut off a hand. If they do it again - cut off a neck.

7) I already have a page on what I'd do with NASA. So - I'd do it. Spaceflight allows us to dream and scratches the exploring itch. I wouldn't spend more than 1% of the annual USA budget on Space.

8) There'd be no pennies. By law, all items would have to be priced so that they came out to an even nickel, including tax.

9) There'd be no dollar bills either. The Mint wants to make dollar coins instead of bills - they cost about the same for the mint to make, but bills last only a couple years and coins are good for 20 or more. The mint always whines that people don't 'accept' the dollar coins. My opinion: Who cares? The mint owns the problem. Quit making the bills and people will go to the coins within 2 years whether they accept it or not. If they don't like it, tough noogies.

10) Militarize our border with Mexico. Illegal immigration is a huge negative factor in several border states. And - I wouldn't grant amnesty to the illegal aliens who have been here - illegally - for years. If you didn't follow the laws to get here, why should I think you'll follow them when you stay here?

11) Currently, you're an U. S. citizen if you were born on our soil. I'd add another requirement: At least one of the parents must also be a U. S. citizen.

12) I'd make Ed Hirsch the Secretary of Education and do pretty much whatever he proposes. [read his book The Schools We Need And Why We Don't Have Them sometime]

13) I'd make Fareed Zakaria the Secretary of State and do pretty much whatever he proposes. [read his book The Future Of Freedom]

14) Re: English in the public schools. "All English All The Time" sounds too harsh. New non-English-speaking students would be instructed in their native tongue (if practical) for one full year - during which they'd take an age-appropriate intensive ESL class. After that - it's English all the way. If you don't like it, don't come here.

15) If a single woman has a kid out of wedlock & she'll be on the dole, she gets a free tubal ligation with the birth. This would apply to married women on the dole also, after the birth of the second child. They are free to have as many kids as they like if they're not asking me to pay for them.

16) You know that collection of dictators and military strongmen that we call the United Nations? Kick them out of New York - they moved beyond irrelevancy long ago. [Lybia is chairing the Human Rights Committee in the UN! What a joke.] I think we need a new international body, a league of human-rights-enabled countries. I hesitate to say "Democracy" - because I don't think the right to vote is crucial (ex: Singapore). But - many of the rights outlined in the US Constitution are. Freedom of speach, freedom of the press, freedom of expression, equal treatment of all citizens under the law, etc. A group of delegates from (say) N. America, Europe, Japan, Oceana, India should construct a list of requirements for membership that respect basic human rights but are not so stringent as to permanently exclude some countries that have made significant strides (ex: Turkey, Mexico).

17) Re: the presidential pardon power - I'd get rid of it. It seems to be only used poorly. We have the wisdom of 215 years of retrospect to look back on now; has this power *ever* been used well? Is there a single case we can reflect back upon and say "Thank God the prez has this power - justice is served"? All I hear are complaints, from Andrew Johnson through Clinton, and I'm sure that when The Shrub leaves office we'll get another fine list of reasons to abolish this presidential power. (Cheney better not be on the Shrub's list!)

18) The jerks in Congress just gave themselves a raise to $160K a year. Revoke that - and set their salaries at 3X the average USA household income. [just over 40K in '01]. This would put their salaries around a more reasonable 125K, and give them an inherent incentive to work on raising the average income. They should be doing this anyway, but there's nothing like an explicit incentive. There ought to be some balance-of-power rule regarding congress voting on their own pay raises... maybe we can have it declared unconstitutional somehow.

19) TheEU/USA/JAPAN farm subsidies are ridiculous. (click on Connect The Dots) Cut them in half. Let that sit for 2 years, and cut them in half again. They are a serious impediment to 2nd and 3rd world countries trying to establish a growing economy.

20) Want to fix social security? Force Congress to use it. Currently, they have their own fleece-the-taxpayer retirement scheme that keeps them in fat city after just a single term. Throw that out and put 'em in the pool with the rest of us. [AFAIK this idea originally comes from Rush Limbaugh, but it's a pretty good one anyway.]

21) 3-month limit on campaigning for prez, senate, and house.

22) It would be illegal to advertise prescription drugs.