King Dave! [Weirddave]

I don't have any fundamental concepts today, but I do have some thoughts from a conversation I had earlier this week. We were talking about the upcoming election and issues and candidates and blah, blah, blah when my friend asked me “What would you do?”. I started to answer and he clarified. “No. What would you do? If you had complete and utter control of the country? If you were made King Dave?”.

Now that's an interesting thought.

Channeling my inner Tom Freidman, this is what I came up with:

Look, there's nothing wrong with this country that I couldn't fix pretty easily if I was made dictator of the US. I'd be the strangest damn dictator in human history, ruthlessly devolving the power of the state and then abdicating, but I'd leave behind a country richer and stronger than any ever imagined by the mind of men.

Wanna fix the economy? Gut the regulatory state. Abolish every agency not authorized by the Constitution and take all of their regs off the books. Remove from Congress the power to delegate. EVERY rule/law/regulation must be voted upon, individually, by Congress. No omnibus bills. Flatten the tax code. Personal and corporate rate of 15%, no deductions, no exemptions. All government agencies are now run on zero based budgeting. Everyone starts from zero every year and has to justify what they get. No automatic increases, no inflation assumptions, no cost plus. GAAP is now the law for the government of the US. No more accounting tricks. Public sector unions are abolished. That ought to turn the economy up to "boil". I'd expect double digit growth, year after year. That coupled with increased revenues from the flat tax ought to have the debt paid off within a decade.

Welfare? Privatized within five years.

SSDI? Well, for the SS part, unchanged for those 55 and older, for those younger than 55 a combination of a gradually increasing retirement age and privatized retirement accounts ought to eliminate that unfunded liability entirely. 

Move the DI part to private insurance companies and watch fraud drop by 80%.

The US Government owns upwards of 90% of some states. Except for national parks, I return all of that land to the states. That gives them an asset to manage so that they can fund any state level expenditures they may desire (Example: I eliminated the EPA, in part because every state has their own state EPA. W/O the Federal EPA, some states are going to want to expand the scope of their EPAs to compensate. This allows them to fund that) 

My immigration policy will be that I want the US to cherry pick the best and brightest from around the world. Those folks get expedited immigration status. If someone is here illegally, they get a one way ticket home, no questions asked. All illegals in prison get the same. Secure the border? “Oh, you can't build a fence, it won't work,” Bullshit. While there may have to be slight variations for geography in isolated spots, I'd build a 10 foot electrified chain link fence with razor wire on top, put another one 25 yards behind it, patrol the area in between with trained attack dogs and put a tower every ½ mile armed with machine guns. Try bringing your 11 foot ladder to that fence Rick Perry. Birthright citizenship would be a thing of the past (It shouldn't be a thing of the present, we only have it due to a deliberate misreading of the 14th Amendment by Justice Brennan in 1982 in Plyler v. Doe ).

And then on the second day.......

There's lots more, but I'm fairly confident I could clean house and go back to my plow pretty quickly. Most of this is just a matter of getting serious and just doing what needs to be done. What would you do if you were king?

Open Thread

posted by Open Blogger at 10:45 AM

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