Election time again. If you didn't know it was election time, you must be a hermit that doesn't own a television or a radio. The mud and bullsh*t has been flying back and forth for the last six months. If you don't remember to duck, you may get hit in the face with it.
I used to be a democrat. I say I used to be because there aren't any candidates that I would support within my party lines. Saying this, I would also never become a republican. But lately, in the interest of greed, the line between democrat and republican has become hazy. I firmly believe that people go into major politics just to further themselves instead of being a voice for the people. Of course I would be okay with this is a Mr. Joe Shmoe was elected to office and was able to give his family things that he never had. But this doesn't happen. First of all, you have to be already a millionaire in order to run for public office. The mud-slinging campaigns cost a lot of money, and so do the thousand dollar plate dinners and the millions of signs defacing public property. These people have no idea what it is like to struggle everyday to make ends meet. They don't know the plight of the single mother, or the woes of the father who can't get medical insurance through his work for his kids. They have never had to decide which bills to pay for the month: the outrageous electric bill or the even more horrific fuel oil bill. They have absolutely no clue about the people who they are supposed to have a voice for.
Therefore, my first order of business would be to stop mudslinging campaigns. Campaign spending would be very strictly limited, and if you earned more than 200,000 last year, then you are not allowed to use public funds for your campaign. You want to run, you pay for it yourself. This way, anyone can run for office, not just the richest of the rich.
My second order of business would be to get rid of the assistant to the assistant positions. Every year, as tax payers, we pay salaries belonging to people with ridiculous positions in government. The only people that we really should pay attention to are the janitors at the capitol building, because they have to shovel more sh*t than most farm hands.
Not one of the candidates for offices this year have addressed education. NOT ONE. Meanwhile, schools are still closing and teachers are losing their benefits and pensions. Schools are falling apart, playgrounds and parking lots are disheveled, but no money is available for these problems. Instead, we have an inane law that states that if schools don't meet a standard testing requirement, they lose their federal funding. You bunch of idiots...these are the schools that are in desperate need of federal funding, and you take it away from them? They need that money for textbooks, computers, and classroom equipment. How are they going to score higher on the aplitude tests if they have no access to the essentials for learning. In addition, if the teachers are constantly being shuffled and treated like crap, don't you think that their morale is going to effect the way they teach? Instead of education, the candidates are only interested in cutting federal and state spending. They do this by cutting funding to state sponsered departments and agencies. The first that always get cut are the agencies having to do with education, social services, foster care, and the Department of Mental Health. Therefore my third order of business would be to restructure our budget to take care of our children, because they are the ones that will run this country when we are gone. Why not give them the best possible advantages to do so?
I would also form a coalition against domestic abuse. Domestic abusers would have to register to a national database just like sex offenders. If they were convicted three times of domestic abuse, they would have to wear an electronic monitoring device monitored by the local police department. Child sex predators would no longer see the light of day once convicted. They would all be housed in solitary confinement for the rest of their disgusting lives. No chance for parole. One strike and you're out. There have been countless studies that state pedophiles cannot be rehabilitated. So if you don't want to get it cut off, then I'm going to cut you off.
I would totally renovate the foster care system. I would take away quotas for social workers working on foster care cases. When you add quotas to an already hectic system, the foster children are not going to get the attention needed to determine whether they are being properly cared for. There are THOUSANDS of foster parents that only have an interest in the $2200 a month per child they get for the foster, rather than the care of said child. Many foster kids are sexually and physically abused, neglected, and are denied necessary therapy for psychological problems. All potential foster parents would have to undergo psychological testing and the homes would have to visited prior to and after placement. Unscheduled visits would be standard. I would make it easier for good families to adopt their foster kids.
I could go on and on with the differences I would make. Foreign policy, keeping our noses in our own country, taking care of the people here, bringing industry back to the U.S., giving farmers tax breaks and incentives so that we no longer have to take chances on tainted foreign fruits, vegetables, and grains. Social Security benefits would be decreased for people making a certain amount of money, and increased for those who make less. I would make it harder for people to find loopholes in the system, like welfare abusers and disability abusers.
SO, if there was a candidate out their who possessed the know-how and the desire to address any of these topics, point me in that direction. But in order for a candidate to do any of the things they promise to do, they have to have empathy for their fellow citizen, love for all people, honesty and integrity. Well--there's the dilemma. In order to be a politian, you can't have honesty and integrity. I guess we just have to come to the reality that we are screwed. Anyone want to migrate to Canada, eh?
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