If you were president....

[kentuck]

What would you do?

If I were president, as my first act, I would put the military and intelligence on alert. Then I would request that Congress repeal the Patriot Act. Then I would tell the nation that we are not a nation that wishes to live our lives in fear and that we have utmost confidence in our military and intelligence. It was not they that failed us on 9/11. It was the leadership at the top.

Then I would request a summit with all the Arab nations. I would tell them that we would like for them to turn to democratic governments but that our government will not try to force our ways on them. We will respect them as equals and expect them to treat their citizens with human rights, both men and women. I would ask for their assistance in creating a stable government in Iraq.

By executive order, I would repeal every George Bush order that negatively affected our environment or individual rights of Americans. I would explain that they were not a conservative government - they were radicals. America deserves better and America will get better.

Then I would request that every employer in America do the patriotic thing and hire more new employees if it was within their power to do so. Then I would get an FCC that would re-instate the Fairness Doctrine and investigate the voting procedures and machines to make sure every vote had a paper trail and could be accounted for. We cannot survive another episode like Florida in 2000. It has to be given more attention than at the present.

I would bring most of our troops home that are stationed around the world and I would release the National Guard from active duty immediately. Their job is to defend our nation - not to defend Big Oil or corporate interests abroad. Then I would use the bully pulpit to get income tax reform so that cororations paid their fair share and would twist the arms off the House and Senate to pass a national healthcare program so that every American that got sick could go to a doctor.

[greatauntoftriplets]

1. KENTUCK FOR PRESIDENT!!!!

Your platform is great.

Please repeal No (Rich) Child Left Behind as well?

[kentuck]

3. Oh ! Absolutely!

Education would be at the top of our agenda...public education.

[pocoloco]

2. Works for me!!

[brokensymmetry]

4. May I offer a small suggestion?

Instead of just requesting the employers hire new employees, institute a few tariffs to create a level playing field between U.S. and foreign corporations.

[kentuck]

6. Damn straight !

I would tell the corporations that if they took their jobs off shore, they'd better expect to sell their products off shore because if they brought them back just to sell for a better bottom line, they were going to get a tariff that would make it unpalatable to move the jobs in the first place.

[Lefty48197]

5. Man, if I was President, I'd whip this country into shape so fast.

This would be the coolest country on earth. This ain't rocket science folks. NOT being an asshole is about half the battle. The rest just requires heart.

[mulethree]

7. haha - I always do it as king, with no Parliament

-Veto any bill that does not have bi-partisan sponsorship
-Veto any bill that does not have significant bi-partisan votes
-Veto any bill that is too narrow in effect
-Veto bills co-sponsored by senators who waste congresses time with
stupid "resolutions" and trivial bills that they never intend
to take to a vote.
-Propose laws that simplify the current laws
-Run every bill past 2 supreme-court nominees to explore the
constitutionality.
-Run NWO treaties past 2 supreme-court nominees to explore the
constitutionality. Back out of them till they get close to
constitutional and have anti-dumping for services.
-Actually use the anti-dumping measures, foreign companies cannot
undercut domestic markets.
-Recruit some mid-level managers from every agency to be a
bureaucracy-buster team, pentagon too.
-Push blocks of states to agree to do their electoral college
assignment proportionally instead of winner-takes-all.
-Make defense and drug companies (all others too) pay big royalties
when they use government-sponsored R&D like technologies coming
out of NASA or DoD procurements.
-Prohibit companies that get government contracts from being owned by
foreigners - on national security basis.
-Cut off the NSA from industrial espionage for corporate friends
-Make intelligence sub-directors accountable for their staffs actions
and extra-curricular activities (e.g. enron)
-Start weaning japan, korea, tiawan, israel off reliance on our
military.
-End the SEC/"Self Regulation" of the securities and banking
businesses. Companies to report all their ownerships,
partnerships etc. Pension funds to detail their stock interests.
corporations not to own more than 10% up to $1mm share in
another corp or partnership. No cross or loop ownership within
an industry. No cross or loop board memberships within industry.
-Give the FCC a truth-in-advertising function with fines like they
have been giving for obscenity.
-Regulate colleges & hospitals that get federal money to require real
reporting of effectiveness and efficiency.
-Limit tax deductions on big charitable donations, excepting those
to effective or new hospitals/colleges, or audited funds to
improve the ineffective.
-Prohibit US personal information leaving the country without very
explicit approval. e.g. credit agencies, medical and legal
records.
-Prosecute corporate crime, Lock up the malignant, sentence the
negligent to community service like the service corp of retired
executives as part of the SBA.
-Increase SBA loans and such to industries that would compete with
imports under anti-dumping protections.
-Create some quasi-public corps like the FNMA/GNMA mortgage corps.
to compete with private corps where you have trust-level profits
but no proof of a trust.
-Require corporations to pay tax on earnings they get from owned
corporations, as if it were dividend income. When a conglomerate
owns a holding corp owns a corp owns a corp, they pay tax on the
income 4 times. Dividend tax at least as high as capital gains
tax.
-Repeal taxes that aren't worth their collection costs and roll them
into the income tax structure.
-Put the lobbyists out of business.
-Pursue some law suits that would force the supreme court to rule on
and clarify various nebulous parts of the law and the
constitution that they like to dance around instead of taking
head-on.

[mulethree]

8. Junior citizens

What if you make american-born to be junior citizens and then make
them take a citizenship test like an immigrant takes before they
get to vote? Something to ensure that they understand civil
liberties and civil rights and the basics of the constitution
and the amendments? Swear them in too.

[ComerPerro]

9. As in, if I became President today?

Well, the first thing I would do would be to go through every single document that the administration has classified that has anything to do with energy meetings, Iraq, 9/11, Afganistan, and the Patriot Act. Then I would release the documents that Bush sealed from the Reagan administration. I really don't think I would have time for anything else, because as soon as I held power for a minute the impeachment proceedings would begin.