What do you want your next government to do?

[Meadmaker]

This election cycle continues to be weird. Unlike most elections, there is hardly any talk of "the issues". It's really about personalities. People who hate Trump think he's a megalomaniac. People who hate Clinton think she's a corrupt liar.

However, regardless of what you think of either candidate, barring some bizarre event, one of them will be President, and they will have to deal with Congress and.....then what? Governments really have to do something. If we were talking about issues, what should they be?

I'm going to share some of my thoughts, focusing on some things that have been topics of discussion in the campaign. In no particular order.


Immigration - It's unfair to say that there has been no talk of issues. This one was incredibly important in the primaries on the GOP side. I know what I would like to see done on immigration: Nothing. It's just not something I care about. I find a couple of things disturbing related to immigration. Trump's anti-Muslim rhetoric is at least borderline racist. Obama's use of an executive order to do something that sure looks a lot like law disturbs me. It's a bit of a power grab. Nevertheless, when all is said and done, I just don't care very much about immigration, or any related issue.

The Deficit I've always been, and I remain, a "deficit Hawk". I wish government would do some combination of spending cuts and tax hikes to balance the budget, like they did in 1999. I was hopeful that the Republican Congress and Democratic President would work as well as they did in the '90s, but apparently that was a bygone era.

Terrorism: Nothing. Or at least not much. They are doing what they do now. I don't see any real need for any change. I wish we could just go in and boot ISIL out of control of anywhere, but if we did that, we would have to figure out what to do next.

Student Debt: It would really tick me off if we just forgave student debt, because those are government backed guaranteed loans. You took the loans. Pay them. On the other hand, the program itself is stupid. Tell 18 year old kids that they can have an unlimited line of credit, backed by the US government (i.e. taxes), but you can't go bankrupt. Watch what happens. It's bad. Throw that program out. Replace it with ....something, but whatever it is, don't make taxpayers pay someone to study art for four years. Engineers, doctors, maybe even a few lawyers, would be a good investment, but I hate the idea of my taxes subsidizing sociology majors.

K-12 education: Can anyone explain to me why the federal government has anything at all to do with K-12 education? Get out.

Jobs: This is really a non-issue, even though in every other election it has been front and center. No one is ever against jobs, so we all agree, right? After a lifetime of observing the economy, I have decided that most things politicians do to boost the economy, don't. It's mostly shuffling money to their friends or constituents.

"Welfare": A word that continues, even though the program doesn't really exist. End as much of it as possible. Exactly how much is "possible" is really problematic, I understand. If it's taking food out of hungry mouths, I can't do it. Still, in general, I really don't like taking money from one person and handing it to another, with no obligation for the recipient. it seems like a bad idea.

Global Warming: This is one of those things that's a real thing, but one nation can do almost nothing about it, and may do more harm than good in trying. I would be happy if the President could just convince people that it isn't a hoax.

Health Care: Tweak Obamacare, but the basic principle is really sound. Everyone should be required to be responsible for their own health care, to the extent possible.

Well, that's it for now. I just wanted to start some sort of dialog on what we wanted government to do for us, without so much focus on what the two best and brightest that our primary elections have brought to us for choice.

 

[Meadmaker]

Actually, I got interrupted near the end of that post. I had intended to edit it before posting, but oh well.

The point of it is, really, are there real issues in this election? Do people really care about specific things? Or is it really personality and imagery? I think about what I want government to do, and I see not a whole lot, and I don't see either candidate calling for a radical departure from the status quo, either.

 

[Norman Alexander]

Two words: Be sane.

 

[Civet]

I'd like them to end the war on drugs.

 

[Meadmaker]

I'd like them to end the war on drugs.

I wonder which candidate is more likely to do that. Conventional wisdom would say a Democrat, but this might be one of those cases where conventional wisdom doesn't work so well.

Hillary is more of a status quo, finger in the wind, sort, who isn't going to do anything radical unless the focus group says it's a good idea. Trump, on the other hand, might say, "It's stupid. I don't care what anyone thinks.".

 

[NoahFence]

Legalize weed, and napalm followed by salting the earth at places that grow opiates.

 

[Beeyon]

Everyone: Choose 1-3 reasonable* nominees for the Supreme Court.







*Definitions will vary.

 

[casebro]

I pretty much agree with the OP, except on ILLEGAL immigration. The revolving door for criminals has to get locked. And the laws against not coming in to be a leech enforced. Maybe even birthright citizenship eliminated, make it for legal resident's children only. A country really ought to be able to control it's borders. But both parties seem to want illegals.

A pragmatic capitalist Trump, or a populist Hillary?

 

[plague311]

I pretty much agree with the OP, except on ILLEGAL immigration. The revolving door for criminals has to get locked. And the laws against not coming in to be a leech enforced. Maybe even birthright citizenship eliminated, make it for legal resident's children only. A country really ought to be able to control it's borders. But both parties seem to want illegals.

A pragmatic capitalist Trump, or a populist Hillary?

Wouldn't make it for legal residents only defeat the point of birthright citizenship?

 

[bruto]

I'll have to check my birth certificate and that of my kids and stepkid, but I don't recall that the legal citizenship or immigration status of the parents was specified. I suppose one could evolve a new system, but it would have to evolve, because otherwise there would be an endless chain of undocumented birthright Americans. If I'm not documented, then my children aren't and their childrent aren't and so forth, until the rules are changed for what goes on a birth certificate. Since both my children and my stepchild have foreign born mothers (children's mother had a green card, stepchild's mother naturalized), birthplace is clearly not enough.

e.t.a. this above is indeed contingent on looking at my birth certificate, which I have not done yet. It's somewhere, I guess.

In the meantime, for the general question, I would like my next government at least not to make things any worse, and not to make our lives any more dangerous or our world smaller, dirtier, uglier, stupider and more hostile.

 

[casebro]

Bruto, Plague, all you need is a birth certificate from anywhere in the USA to be a citizen , since 1776. Much of the rest of the world, you do have to be the progeny of legal residents/citizens/... Dunno where they do draw the line, but they do.

Does Japan even allow immigrants to become citizens, or their kids?

Bruto, we are getting closer all the time to a National ID. Got a passport?

 

[Meadmaker]

I pretty much agree with the OP, except on ILLEGAL immigration. The revolving door for criminals has to get locked. And the laws against not coming in to be a leech enforced. Maybe even birthright citizenship eliminated, make it for legal resident's children only. A country really ought to be able to control it's borders. But both parties seem to want illegals.

A pragmatic capitalist Trump, or a populist Hillary?

I wish the government would enforce existing immigration laws. I don't care much about immigration, but I do care about law.

ETA: But do you really think Trump is a pragmatist? I think he's a combination idealist and narcissist. He wants everything to be perfect, with perfect being defined as "what I want".

 

[fishbob]

- - snipped for brevity - -

K-12 education: Can anyone explain to me why the federal government has anything at all to do with K-12 education? Get out.

- - snipped for brevity - -

The Texas Board of Education is a prime example of why the feds need to have a hand in K-12. Jesus was not in the boat with George Washington crossing the Delaware. Creation Science is not science.

 

[bruto]

Bruto, Plague, all you need is a birth certificate from anywhere in the USA to be a citizen , since 1776. Much of the rest of the world, you do have to be the progeny of legal residents/citizens/... Dunno where they do draw the line, but they do.

Does Japan even allow immigrants to become citizens, or their kids?

Bruto, we are getting closer all the time to a National ID. Got a passport?

Casebro, I know this is the case now, but my response was to a proposal to change birthright citizenship to require that the parents be legal residents or citizens. That would require that they produce birth certificates or legal papers, and would mean that a person born in the United States, even to parents who have been undocumented residents for a generation or more, could be deported. Whether the constitutional prohibition against retroactive laws would make my birthright citizenship apply to the requirement of proving "legal" residency and citizenship is at least uncertain if legal citizenship is redefined as having legal parents, unless my parents could prove theirs, and so on down the line. Would such a law mean that a person could be deported to a country his parents never knew either? It's pretty silly, but then I think what we're dealing with is pretty silly to start with.

I suggest that although birthright citizenship carries with it a certain allowance for misuse, on the whole the alternative is likely to be complicated, messy, and open to injustice.

e.t.a. and yes I have a passport because it makes flying easier, and because I've travelled outside the country a few times in recent years. I even reluctantly got a picture license a few years ago, though if the state had not lost my renewal in the mail I'd have resisted it. Vermont was, and may still be, the last state in the union to allow non-picture drivers' licenses, and I enjoyed confusing people from other states with it. But the picture license is more convenient, and even my wife, who hates that stuff and leaves her wallet at home unless she's driving, got one when hers came due.

My wife is Cuban born, and loves being an American and not having to carry papers.

 

[casebro]

Casebro, I know this is the case now, but my response was to a proposal to change birthright citizenship to require that the parents be legal residents or citizens. That would require that they produce birth certificates or legal papers, and would mean that a person born in the United States, even to parents who have been undocumented residents for a generation or more, could be deported. Whether the constitutional prohibition against retroactive laws would make my birthright citizenship apply to the requirement of proving "legal" residency and citizenship is at least uncertain if legal citizenship is redefined as having legal parents, unless my parents could prove theirs, and so on down the line. Would such a law mean that a person could be deported to a country his parents never knew either? It's pretty silly, but then I think what we're dealing with is pretty silly to start with.

I suggest that although birthright citizenship carries with it a certain allowance for misuse, on the whole the alternative is likely to be complicated, messy, and open to injustice.

e.t.a. and yes I have a passport because it makes flying easier, and because I've travelled outside the country a few times in recent years. I even reluctantly got a picture license a few years ago, though if the state had not lost my renewal in the mail I'd have resisted it. Vermont was, and may still be, the last state in the union to allow non-picture drivers' licenses, and I enjoyed confusing people from other states with it. But the picture license is more convenient, and even my wife, who hates that stuff and leaves her wallet at home unless she's driving, got one when hers came due.

My wife is Cuban born, and loves being an American and not having to carry papers.

You already have ell the papers you would need, so does your immigrant wife.

And the tech is here to go 'paperless" with thumbprints. And I suspect it will be the commercial side that actually implements ID- why carry a credit card? What with the potential for the Gov to stop printing paper money. WHAM, it'll be real.

 

[casebro]

Anybody ever hear of either party actually polling their members about Illegal Immigration?

 

[bruto]

You already have ell the papers you would need, so does your immigrant wife.

And the tech is here to go 'paperless" with thumbprints. And I suspect it will be the commercial side that actually implements ID- why carry a credit card? What with the potential for the Gov to stop printing paper money. WHAM, it'll be real.

I know we all have all the papers we need, because we have passports and licenses and birth certificates and in her case her naturalization papers. (e.t.a...Somehow or other, her mother, after the revolution and the exile, managed through sheer grit and persistence to get a copy of her birth certificate sent, which was then accidentally left in Montreal in 1967 or so when they left the country to re-enter legally, having been undocumented refugees before that. Many years later, looking to get a new passport, we sought it out, and, adding unlikelihood to unlikelihood, although the Montreal INS office no longer even existed, some diligent government minion found the right box in the right storage area, and it was found! ) I have chips in my credit cards and some sort of special code on my driver's license, too. But we both like living, at least so far, in a place where you can leave them all in a box.

Of course this is Vermont, where you don't even have to wear clothes.

I don't think we're very close to moneyless commerce. I hope not.

And I still think that eliminating birthright citizenship would open up a nasty can of worms.

 

[The Fallen Serpent]

I too want to see some work on immigration but not in the same direction. Personally I would like to see the US and Mexico come to some agreements on decent freedom of movement between the countries. Ways for low income Mexicans to come easily to the US as near permanent residents, and permissive rules for migratory work across the border.

I want to see a winding down of the war on drugs. My ideal would be to place the handling of drug scheduling in the hands of the CDC. A focus on discouraging dangerous drugs and abuse with strong health resources instead of criminalizing recreational drug use.

A stronger push towards universal health care. I think a co-federalized system would be best for the US, largely managed by the states with federally set standards requirements. It might be too late for such to be politically viable in the near future.

Increased focus on police reform. Again, I see co-federalization as the best setup though more focus on the states in this case. Strong state licensing and organization. Federal oversight to focus on compliance and data tracking. Body cams as the standard in every department. Heavy restrictions on civil forfeiture.

Stronger support for the nation's infrastructure.

ISPs as common carriers.

 

[Tero]

Nothing much. Hold back the crazies. Unisex individual toilets for all.

 

[Jrrarglblarg]

"First, do no harm."

Jimmy Carter pissed people off by putting solar panels on the White House. Ronnie pissed different people off by having them removed.

As long as we can keep the amount and kind of harm done to the nation by our next president down to this kind of level we should be fine.