Your ideas, not your cash for this campaign
Welcome to my campaign. What distinguishes my efforts most? I want to upend the federal system so that our nation can have a Local Governance focus again. And I will be asking for your ideas, not your money.
Easy web publishing and my thrifty style will help me set a new national campaign precedent – to exemplify that ideas can matter more than money.
My reform ideas get radical when needed, but often lean conservatively toward a much smaller, more efficient federal government. That’s why I grabbed the Republican label. I’m for a Republic again.
Local governments can become labs for best practice innovation again once we free them to fund themselves with the lion share of a typical taxpayer’s burden. And introduce other ways governments can earn revenue like a business or artist might.
Such a strategy demands that less dollars to the top and fewer traditions of passing money down from these umbrella layers of government. Cities without so much ‘state’ will allow more agile investment in ideas that impact.
Button links to my main suggestions are above, other topical posts flow below. You can also get to know me through my active and publicly displayed social network participation: Twitter by keyword, Twitter straight, tumblr, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, and Google+. In the last link you’ll find a detailed list of all the great jobs that have molded me as your best candidate.
If you like what you see, tell others. I’ll need your help to earn a nomination as a reform candidate for POTUS in 2012. A cleatus like me, with no favors to repay, can lead our government to a brighter future.
Our country’s most pressing priority is establishing the most transparently accountable representative democracy possible. I’ll advocate for new online tools our leaders can use to show effective and accountable progress. If they do that maybe we can get rid of election season. When performance wanes for six months, constituents can can their representative. Any other employee has to earn their keep, our politicians should expect the same. Social citizenship online will also continue to grow. The manners in which our leaders are lobbied will likely dramatically change as a result.
Today, most politicians spend more time asking for money than getting anything done. You can be sure that when we meet I’m really asking for your ideas and help. I’m not simply being nice until you open your wallet. I aim to demonstrate my capacity for thrifty, effective communication by bootstrapping my campaign until the opportunity for public campaign financing becomes an option. Ask my hometown friends what a cheapskate I can be – been this way all my life.
Local governing structures work well because those in the neighborhood can more easily direct actions that matter. At farther reaches, citizens tend to be able to only extend dilute, indirect influence over the governing representatives. Most importantly, the representatives begin to listen chiefly to those funding their campaigns rather than the constituents paying their salaries.
Local action is most obvious when parents switch the learning environment for their children when needed. Or when people switch churches, civic clubs, dance troupes, or the online social networks they feel most represents their values.
In metro areas, a city that has lots of rules and social welfare programs might discourage other types of independent public service groups from taking much responsibility for their neighbors prosperity.
I’ve lived in several areas with more than one strong town. Across a river from one sample town it is equally likely that a complementary or a directly opposite set of governance will thrive. Those who hate one town’s options can easily pick up and move while maintaining their other connections to family, friends, and careers ongoing.
Suburbs offer their own mix of governing and privately operating public servants. These are influenced both by the urban and rural areas nearby. The exurbs and counties also develop neighborhood structures and a personality molded around the people. The people living in a community will always structure the mold of neighborhood, environment, and service options they desire. I simply think we can make the iterations happen faster.
The internet helps us do that on the state, federal, and international levels too, but the fact remains that citizens unite most effectively in their own neighborhoods.
That is why I call this the Neighborhoods First campaign. If we focus on local governments having more flexibility in our national structure of governance, an even more nimble give-and-take between citizens and all our governments will occur.
Social networking and location-based applications certainly help us give feedback to governments stretching over both small and large geographies, but the fact will always remain that people care most about the communities they spend the most time living at closest, smallest scale to – whether in real life or virtual life. Therefore, I think it is very important to reset our governance infrastructure as a whole so that it reflects local neighborhoods first. In contemporary society, there are many fewer geographical barriers to opportunity in this nation. There is no need for significant redistribution of money collected at the federal layer. When a society is generally prosperous and stable, unearned redestributions only inspires weakness in the regions not willing to improve the slate of opportunities themselves. Life feels stalled in this country because everyone is waiting for the federal government to get back to them about some dumb grant. Instead, they should be marketing their causes to the people who live nearby.
Are some towns too small to run things on their own? I don’t think so, but natural consolidations of local governance structures will always be possible. Fremont, California is a young city formed from several small towns that wanted to work collectively. They chose an area to call “downtown” and now they have a big library, abundant restaurants, fancy fitness gym, large cinema, and a Trader Joe grocery too. Similarly, broader geographies can share in figuring out, then funding and administering governance that they decide makes the most sense at the smaller scales of neighborhood, town, or county level.
In short, our history of sending most of the citizen money to the top layer of governance should end. Redistribution by politician choice is actually making opportunity less evenly distributed in society again.
Giving local governments more flexible and funding options will help their citizens develop communities that best reflect the wishes of those spending the most time there. More variations of the good life will thrive. And there will be more variations and innovations for good governance.
It’s now possible. It’s now time.
earning a stake vs earning a scholarship coupon
Could an education bubble hurt if it ruptured? As “higher” education expenses (many claim these should be delivered as a basic government-subsidized staple, or depending on the view, forgiven country club debt, for all young people) accelerate, what is considered a valuable scholarship? Back-in-my-day, a “full ride” offer was worth about 25-30k in tuition expense at the most expensive schools. Soon after I graduated, 32-37k might have been the price tag at luxury schools charging as much as a Lexus.
What is the first handy lever most who lack physical labor or artisan level skills use to thrust themselves into adulthood? College? Not exactly. It’s the ability to use a cover letter that refers to college completion that can lift those who want to traditionally use their mind to begin bootstrapping success for themselves.
Would more young people on the cusp, or dreaming far ahead, toward adulthood have a better lever if we gave them one that could be pressed against more than a recruiter’s inbox? What if the recruiter is a machine that only scans for certain things the cover letter writer doesn’t know about? What if the economy is in awkward phase and the cover letter writer would rather switch to a lever than can be more generally effective against the many other rocks society offers creative minds and hungry hearts?
If I was young again, looking toward the completion of secondary education, I’d much rather work toward earning a true stake. A stake can purchase any kind of lever. A scholarship is a coupon for purchasing, often with momentum reducing debt, one class of levers.
I want to find ways for young people to earn access to use more types of levers. Well-funded secondary education facilities and inspiring teachers are not levers. Books and computer tutorials are only coaching and cheering too. The communication networks can be lever-like. We can wire these teachers, students, books, and computer tutorials together, hack some new pedagogy while we also get in a bigger hurry to hark hosannas for the many successful mentorship processes that likely need wider distribution.
Better communication we can all agree.
But, what about a real stake, rather than a coupon for some more, higher, education, as a reward for doing well with all those well-funded resources, coaches, cheerleading, and communication tools. A real stake will earn society more capable adults who will solve practically…maybe not every, but most every big or little thing. College will be purchased with these stakes by fewer as many young people will choose other levers for moving their lives productively. At that time Higher Education can return to being something superlative to secondary education. As long as we continue to play the scholarship coupon tradition, higher and secondary education risk becoming more and more similar. Students, in this no progress world, will swirl with uncertain motivation toward our society’s structured offerings for prepping mind and gettin’ ahead. They’ll grow wise to the lethargy of the progress, word will spread that they have simply been offered more of much-the-same taking place in maybe-nicer-buildings. They’ll revolt. They’ll grab stakes and tear up these silly coupons.
My itemized suggestions for a Grand Bargain
Although my original tax plan (see behind the “tax” button in the header of this website) remains an ideal for long term consideration, the terms below are close to the current goals of each side meeting for a federal budget Grand Bargain before Thanksgiving.
1.) temporarily raise tax on incremental income dollars over 1 million to 40%
This concession should be directly linked to entitlement reform. It expires December 31, 2013 if ten dollars for each incremental dollar raised from tax year 2013 through this 40% temporary rate is not stripped from current 2013 entitlement spending budget estimates by the Congressional Winter Holiday recess. If the budget is in place the rate can carry through December 31, 2014 if the same goal is accomplished next year.
2.) Carried Interest treated as normal income not as Capital Gains
3.) other investor Capital Gains tax rate raised to 20%
Each dollar of new revenue generated from these two changes that raise revenue from the investor class must be met with cuts equal to five additional dollars in any federal government spending for the following year. If not, Capital Gains rate for the following year falls to 0% to potentially stimulate interest in private investment in growing the economic base to increase revenue for groups. If the government catches up with the spending cuts of the goal, the Capital Gains rate can rise back to 20% in the following tax year.
4.) maximum personal income deduction of $20,000. Joint filers $30,000
5.) mortgage interest deduction on one residence only
New revenue generated from these two deduction reduction offers for new revenue from citizens with more sufficient means must be met with two dollars of cuts from five successive fiscal year federal planning budget. If it doesn’t, it expires.
Stewardship
Some of us are lucky to have grown up in scenic places with river, woods, and clear sky persistently reminding us that our surroundings matter more than we do. We are stewards of our positive influences.
Some have studied weather, lived through storms, or read stories about the web of life called ecology. We are stewards of future opportunity.
Some have had the pleasure to work in state, national, or private parks where the surrounding outside is adored more than the prettiest paintings of most any museum wall. We are stewards of heritage.
Some also experience the earth knowing we are another floating ship traveling onward through the universe. We want to be the best voyage stewards as we sail, work, and play on a vessel we can’t yet disembark.
Some of us don’t think to use words like “environmentalist”. Keeping our bunk tidy and our deck scrubbed is a natural, common sense, everyday endeavor.
Target Briefs
An interesting article in the Wall Street Journal today asks for an economic measure for all seasons. Most sales numbers vary with outside temperature and cultural habits such as the beginning of school.
Lady’s underwear sales varies quite a bit by holiday season. But, I don’t men’s do.
Except for a the back-to-school and stocking stuffing spikes I doubt Men’s underwear sales number vary much by month of the year. To control for these two months economists could look only at the adult men sizes. Men are giving up on school ahead of everyone else and we often peanuts and beef jerky if we have a holiday gift stocking carrying our name. (Those of us who wait for a birthday or holiday to own anything new are certainly non-influential statistical outliers – including the entire XY population of Wisconsin.)
Economists could simply pay for the sales and shrinkage data of both basic and more flashy men’s underoos from our discount retailers such as Target, TJMaxx, and Walmart to learn a lot about the economy. I traveled the cities, towns, and country roads of USA from 2007 to last winter. I can attest to the desperation a bunch of taped up discount packages of five FruitoftheLooms makes the feel of a neighborhood.
Basic socks and white tees sales decline would be a sure sign things are slowing. These are luxuries to the thriftiest among us.
Can you think of better measures?
Solving Civil Wars
Today, I read a summary of the VP debate to determine if there was some significant substance to recall. As a fun debate it was a nice change from what we’ve seen in recent U.S. political history, but post-debate assessments by journalists and a focused review of the transcript help me recall there was more than agile facial expressions anchored by bright teeth, gulps of water, and an auntie trying to get to the bottom of the toilet paper rolling in the neighborhood.
Ryan dropped some foreign policy lingo to convincingly remind us that war has contract law too. Biden suggested that Middle East neighbors had to lead the way to resolution of the long civil war in Syria, but the USA should help with refugee relief.
With civil wars, in particular, there is inadequate pressure to resolve them because there are really no options that preserve, simultaneously, sovereign nation status and sovereign person status.
Essentially, the peaceful and neutral have to flee (giving up their freedom to pursue their previous plan for prosperity) while the war parties, of many tribes, fight for the future sovereign rights of the nation.
Could we begin to craft an understood path toward an expiration date on these intra-state grievances? The path doesn’t have be codified by international law, but a statement of goals could begin to serve as a guide for when neighboring nations should put out the fire.
1.) If a governing body loses governing capacity of its populace for 300 days, the governing body loses legitimacy. Define loss of control specifically. Has half of the state’s population lost the opportunity to perform the daily work of their personal business due to terror and bloodshed? If so, then I believe the neighboring nations have a moral imperative to do more than accept refugees. Define loss of citizen opportunity as we do recessions by tracking something or many things personal and economic.
2.) Between 300 and 330 days schedule a meeting in one of neighboring nations inviting all representatives from warring tribes and each neighboring nation.
3.) If no plan for arbitrating an end to the civil war is successful, a new governance should be installed before day 365 arrives. Use the 35 remaining days to solicit and choose among proposals from any nation for lease development partnerships with the previous state’s refugees and neutral parties.
The parties active in the civil war who failed at arbitration and could not submit to any of these future proposals would be sentenced to unpaid internships or the international MBA programme of their choice.
We define economic recessions and depressions. We should better define civil unrest. If we do, more confident cooperation and policy can build some math to solve the problem.
Root of anti-Americanism
Sure, the USA is exceptional. We’re all unique snowflakes – individuals and countries all have special personalities worthy of exceptional certificates of participation on this blue and green orb.
But specifically because we have taken a stronger leadership role in various capacities in recent decades, we must go forward with very dressed down talk. The GOP habit of placing a call for humility adjacent to ridiculous overt pride in proclamations such as “greatest nation on the face of the earth” doesn’t translate well in any language.
Today and in the decades to come, we are very happy that many countries now have the capability of leading great progress. Therefore, expressions of USA pride need to include this cooperative attitude.
We can remain exceptionally talented as a country and exceptionally willing to share versions of our experiments with success without any obnoxious statements or behavior that implicitly question the exceptional potential of any other country.
It’s ok to strut a unique personality as long as we don’t suggest that strut is a director’s march calling all others to fall in line and join our cadence. It’s that drum corp leadership style in our foreign public relations that is the root of anti-Americanism.
Nations with Islamic majorities, in particular, are highly skeptical of American culture even if they are experimenting with their own expressions of democracy and capitalism. Let them wave their versions of these themes in their own way. The USA should carefully guard against any action that suggests we want their society to look like ours.
We value diversity in our country. We simply have to do a better job of demonstrating that we value diversity in the world, too.
Poverty of Capability Does Not Equal Poverty of Financial Wealth
Traditions of ethics have taught us that the fortunate and capable should give back to the less fortunate and incapable. I agree with this duty.
But as someone who has chosen for several years of my life to seek other forms of richness that are not measured by dollars, I am hypersensitive to most arguments I hear for redistributing luck and opportunity. They are superficially focused only on financial poverty.
I can choose to be poor.
I can choose to be unemployed.
Although I can improve the probability I’ll find fortune and improve my capabilities, I have much less control dictating the increments in their growth than I do my ability to convince someone to offer me incremental lots of monies for my labor efforts. There are many very small ways one can start on the road to self-employment if the job market is tough.
I do have empathy for those seeking traditional employment. I have submitted countless unanswered cover letters and been rejected following many job interviews myself.
That is why I’m the best POTUS candidate to remind us that we should really focus attention on those individuals in society who most deserve assistance improving their access to serendipitous fortune and maximizing their capabilities.
Don’t enable people who choose financial poverty for the many complicated reasons that it happens. The best way not to enable the condition of financial poverty is to allow charity that is more nimbly responsive and at arm’s length relationship interactions. Social safety nets operate most efficiently and most equitably at neighborhood scale.
Debits and Credits seek another Medici Family Renaissance
Debits and Credits seek another Medici Family Renaissance
There’s a myriad of ways for corporations to avoid income tax. The schemes employed today seem complex indeed, but corporate accounting has only evolved incrementally over time.
Perhaps it’s time for a debit/credit revolution. Florence, Italy thrived in large part to the debit and credit accounting system the Medici family developed so that more accountable investments could be made in the local guilds of craftspeople.
Now that several hundred years have passed, we’re due for an accounting system that better reflects the nuances of the busy interactions we have in more crowded societies.
Over the long term I’d be up for canceling corporate income taxes. The competitive nature of the world and the fluidity of international trade is driving nations toward that end anyway.
It would be smart for corporations to spend time and energy not on tax avoidance, but to develop better tracking and trading of steady recompense for the greater range of tangibility in the assets and liabilities they lay upon society. This accounting would transparently track their positive and negative impacts on society as much as those obvious additions and subtractions to the more traditional bottom line.
Currently, we rely too much on the legal system to settle less common liabilities. But many of these liabilities are not unusual or uncommon or cumbersome to assess. Therefore, they should be regularly tracked over time. If they are tracked, they will get optimized.
Accounting 2.0 is the call. Today these high-priced professionals spend most of their intellectual energy slapping alternate labels on the items they tally depending on the tax or investing audience they face. They can do better to design a system more responsive to the fuzziness of all labels. A focus toward definitive value measurement instead of an obsession with defining labels will help our goal to efficiently delivery resources to the most industrious people and capital.
A smarter system will also help further the better purchase judgement consumers crave. Even businesses as consumers throughout the ‘value chain‘ seek to become better equipped to choose products and services based on more sophisticated value calculations. When they do, they can demonstrate more consistently valid numbers demonstrating possible risk and return to all stakeholders – current employees, recruited talent, investors, regulators, and end consumers.
Most importantly, if we gradually groom this revolution across all business such a system would aid current professionals’ career fulfillment. As well as young people planning how they can best positively impact society in their life times. In the end, maybe we’ll return to times of less career switching – not that that is innately a bad thing. But, it is safe to say that more people finding better value matches over a lifetime will result in more experts to advance society progress as a whole. Personal and corporate industry will flourish.
Rather than charge corporations for subscribing to our government the federal government could partner with industry to develop unbiased research measuring the data for positives and negatives. If we do this the federal government can focus on serving the citizens as individuals rather than the quasi-personhoods of companies. In a way, it’s double-taxation to charge income for both humans and businesses. Unless you can think of a business that is run completely by robots. That would be high-frequency trading firms – go ahead and tax those bots a bit.
China investment in Nigeria
The article above quickly summarizes the advantages and risks in the situation when a larger nation helps a less developed nation invest in infrastructure. National infrastructure exists in many forms – political, economic, educational, social/care.
Compare the opportunities and risks associated with such direct diplomacy. Then, consider if a body like the United Nations could offer an independent brokering platform to not only increase the range and availability of these cooperative transactions, but also make them more fluid.
There would be fewer perceived turf wars as the conceptual distance between mutual investment contracts and neo-colonialism is more distant with a full menu of options mediated by the broker platform.
The UN could model angelist for facilitating the introductions and aid nations in soliciting their startup or growth-phase needs.
If International Affairs resembled Neighborhood Notions
Independent nations would behave like families as they generally strive to promote equitable care with balanced financial books. They also maintain good reputations with enough neighbors that they can borrow for an emergency or for a neighborhood investment that helps everyone.
Corporations would assist other businesses to SCORE general vitality of the entire area – concerned for shoppers and businesses in that quarter, that fiscal year, and that next century. They participate enthusiastically in formal and informal community service alliances (Kiwanis, Rotary, etc) or as any Mom and Pop shop vested in a long lasting neighborhood – actively sponsoring Little League, weekend creek cleanup meetups, and mentoring new community groups also hoping to do the future some good.
United Nations would serve more like an independent Insurance Broker offering a round table full of brochures thriving nations offer to lower risk of transition or development to others.
NATO and other regional security alliances would be like biker gangs – mostly riding around making noise to show they have the horsepower to run you down if necessary.
World religious leadership would work with each other in the neighborhood to develop the tone of exchange that actively brings harmony between those with varying beliefs while also serving as a first lookout/bell ringer for connecting those with resources to those needing them.
Borders would function more like Parks as places to play outside the family’s yard. Buffer biosphere lands might include restaurants or grills to help us share company and the shared commonwealth.
Oceans, Lakes, Rivers, Creeks, Forests, and Prairies function similarly to restaurants and grocery stores – places of sustenance more reliable and diverse than what we grow in our own yard.
Internet would bring our 24 hour libraries, museums, and schools to all those in the future neighborhood as a cooperatively owned utility which contracts out much of the servicing. Device makers occasionally bring by new study carrels, media companies hang signs promoting a touring performance, and broadcast infrastructure companies help us shine the displays, trim the growth in the gardens, and automate the toilet cleaning.
