New Goals for 2009

It's a new year and a new head of the federal administration is taking the helm. Election promises aside, we need new goals to improve our society and bring about prosperity.

Goals to set:

1) Infrastructure improvement - building something you cannot maintain is foolish. We have gas lines, sewer lines, roads, bridges, and all types of systems that need attention. Tomorrow is not the time to start doing this. It should have started years ago. When you buy a car, you get a handy manual that tells you when to have certain maintenance performed. It's time to get that manual out for the U.S. infrastructure.

2) Complete rejection of religion in public decision making - if I told you that my firm belief is that Gorgons from Nebula 5 will one day return to take over our planet and free us from the slavery of other men and that the spirit of the Gorgon prophet Uka fills us all with his great light of peace, you would think I was crazy. So far, the major religions of this planet have done little better than the Gorgons of Nebula 5. Organized religion (as opposed to personal spiritual belief) is a crock. It's time we let rationalists make decisions and not spiritualists, sorcerers, witches, faith healers and power mad religious crackpots who invent ways to psychologically enslave weaker minds and build up their own power at the expense of society. If people want to believe in a personal God and worship Him on their own time, that's fine. But freedom of religion necessarily entails freedom from any particular religion. No one belief system should be in charge of making decisions for everybody, Christianity notwithstanding. For the Gorgon believers wish to create laws to ready our nation for the great return of Uka*. Should we let them? (The point is: anyone with an above average intelligence and imagination, a modicum of stage presence, and mildly decent acting skills can lead people down the rosy path into a ditch.)

3) A Reduction in Work Time - If people worked less they would spend less time wasting time while at work. The truth is this: work expands to fill the time allotted for it. Working 'harder' is dumb. With more actual free time, people would actually work more effectively because they could concentrate on their jobs instead of the million things they don't have time to do because they're always at work. There needs to be a mandatory cap on hours worked - 32 is the cap. No one works over that - that means no 'overtime' or other such trickery. The reduction in work time would also mean more time for people to independently, on their own time: exercise, invent things, invest in their families, and enjoy the life enhancements of our time. Culture could become important again. The arts could flourish. People could be(gasp), happy and productive instead of obese and depressed. Let's face it, most work occurs at the direction of a few bosses at the top who think they have the answers. Obviously, they do not. They're primary goal is to make a profit for their shareholders, the invisible masters who rule over the company. This does not lead to innovation or anything resembling democracy or freedom for Americans. Free the slaves. Free the Americans.

4) A living wage - Every job in America should pay enough for food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, and a modest amount of entertainment. The idea that people have to constantly work just to scrape by is a travesty. It's sheer greed and the corporations who allow it do it intentionally. If they can't figure out how to do business while investing in a solid workforce, then they should go out of business. Is that not what the market is for?

5) Stability - We need to stabilize America. This has three parts.

a) We need to treat everyone like human beings and no one like gods and kings. We spend far too much paying sports stars and movie stars and media stars huge amounts of money to play around while everyone else struggles: teachers, firemen, policemen, ordinary people. No, don't spread the wealth. Don't give wealth to people who don't deserve it to begin with. As far as CEOs, unless you started the company in your basement and grew it to where it is today, you don't deserve gazillions of dollars to press the autopilot button or feel good about yourself. Cut, cut, cut, cut, cut their salaries, bonuses, etc. Incentives for innovation and enhancing the business in someway is great, but do not give people 'golden parachutes' when they drive the business into the ground. When that happens there is obviously something nefarious going on. Don't think we're stupid.

b) Encouraging stable families.

i) Make divorce possible only for abuse and neglect. Hopefully people will take a lot longer to decide whether to get married or not. This will necessarily create better matches because the threshold for getting married will be a lot higher.

ii) Make it illegal for any business other than the military to transfer employees from one location to another. Local areas need a legacy of families who grow and contribute to their community and that is impossible when families stay for two to three years and then disappear because Erudine Inc. decided it needed a new branch manager in Hoboken. If this means providing tax cuts for people who stay longer in a community, then do it.

iii) Give non-traditional marriage partners the same rights as conventional partners. This means if people want to marry someone of the same gender or multiple people want to partner together in a marriage relationship, they have the same rights as anyone else. This is a matter of contract law. If people want to contract with one another in any type of legal relationship, that should not be limited by religious belief systems that curtail their rights.

c) Make it illegal to fire someone other than for gross misconduct. Any other system creates virtual slavery where bosses have entirely too much power. Yes, people can quit, if they don't mind having no health insurance, no money, no car, no home, etc.

6) Discourage the anal retentive, the obsessive compulsive, and the ego maniacal. Our society currently encourages insanity by putting people with these traits in charge. It's time we stopped doing that. We need special program to treat these people at an early age as soon as they start showing these traits.

7) Provide incentives for good behavior rather than punishment for bad. We live in a society run on fear of going to jail. How about if we lived in a society where we lived on the joy of doing good? Some would say, why would we have to encourage good behavior? Shouldn't people feel intrinsically good about "doing the right thing"? Well, wouldn't you rather have your insurance company pay you for not having accidents then all your money going to people who do? What people don't understand is our tax money, our hard-earned money goes to felons and others to take care of them in prison. I'm not saying we do away with jails. I'm saying we make them pay their own way and if they can't, then they starve to death. Cruel and unusual? It's a cruel society that takes money away from honest people to give it to people who really don't give a rip about society. That means more money in the pockets of people who do the right thing.

8) Reform the criminal code so that only real crimes are punished by jail time. Rape, murder, theft, battery, and arson are crimes. If we concentrated on just a few really bad actions that are obviously unwanted in society we may have justice system that would not be bogged down in every ridiculous puny charge invented by overzealous legislators.

9) Seat Congress every ten years. We don't need them in session that much. They really can only do more harm than good. And how does anyone keep up with all the laws enacted? I guarantee you that no one knows. It's a waste of time.

10) Ignore this whole list. That's right. Ignore it all. But if you do, you have to come up with your own list of what you would do to make society better.

It takes minimal effort to be a critic. Society is full of complainers, naysayers, and negativity. Where are the real ideas rather than pat dismissals? Where is an assertion of something positive? It's not enough to be a commenter or an analyst. It's not enough to cling to some party line like a baby with a philosophical blanket. Invent. Create. Make something positive happen.


*This entails requiring all women to wear what amounts to fake furry tails and all men have to erect a huge statue in the likeness of a giant Kumquat, exactly 600 feet high and 350 feet wide. There's more but those are the main things.