I went to a NAACP "Meet the Candidates" night last week. My first. I sat across from a very nice older lady. When they had an open question and answer time, she raised her hand to speak. She stood to speak and with tears in her eyes and her hands shaking, she spoke on the new voter ID card required in Indiana. She said that many elderly do not understand why they have to have a picture ID card to vote. She spoke on how the black community has fought for over 100 years to have the right to vote and now she and many others think this is how the white community, the white Republican community is taking their right to vote away.

My eyes were burning after she sat down for I saw in her a deep hurt.

How can we do this to fellow Americans? How have we gotten to this place? The country I once knew is no more.

I will never forget the look in her face. Never.

Kathy,

That is so sad.

We have had this law of ID proof here in CT for many years. But luckily, we can take any proof the person has on them, like a utility bill or something. They prefer a license or photo ID, but will accept the other if they do not have one. I do not WHY a photo has to be shown.

I wrote votescript in April 2004. It turns any
non-legacy PC into a paper ballot editing station,
with an electronic trail. It solves the Diebold problem, and should have solved the Bush problem.
THe code itself is in md.politics in Usenet News (Google Groups). It's a Linux shell script, i.e.
utterly transparent. Nothing the DNC can do will
help them any more than promoting votescript.

State of the Union

Oh YEAH?????

Presidential platform of Rick Hohensee, revised January 2006
INTRODUCTION
One must look at my platform in totality. Parts of it will impinge on a particular individual negatively. One must make an assessment of the overall effect. This is especially true, for example, as pertains to something like "labor policy". I have no explicit labor policy, but have several proposals that dramatically favor people typically categorized as "labor". This is how problems are solved; by breaking them into smaller and smaller problems, solving the smaller problems, and letting the little things take care of the big things. Most politicians, however, have no interest in solutions at all. Most are lawyers, and make their money perpetuating problems. 3/4 of Congress, for example, voted to invade Iraq.
Based on what I know from an adult Internet account, basic cable, modest but extremely varied everyday experience, and various print and broadcast media, I want to be President so that I can try to...
In short, give the USA a much-needed overhaul.
SPECIFICS (in very roughly top-down priority)
Get out of Iraqi cities immediately, including vacating the Green Zone, and retire to functions of state and federal governments, until the cities form regional alliances analagous to, and perhaps with external, nations, as they, the representatives of the Iraqi cities, see fit. This may involve a turf trade between Shi'a and Kurd areas of Iran, for example. If Iraq chooses to reform as Iraq, make it as easy as possible for the new Iraq to be a secular democratic republic at the federal level.
(Jan '06) Jack Murtha's epochal 6-month withdrawal proposal is basically a military __expression of the above political framework. His "quick-strike force" and an "over-the-horizon presence of Marines" is my 'functions of state and federal governments'. My withdrawl is within Iraq, however. Murtha wants completely out ASAP. I'm one step less abrupt.
Reaffirm that the "war on terror" is mostly diplomacy and police work when prosecuted by the competent, and only becomes all-out war when prosecuted by the incompetent and/or corrupt. (Jan '06) Desperate right-wingers are now in the habit of justifying any and everything by noting that we are at war. We need to call it off. Claiming that some group declared war on the the former USA on 9-11 gives said groups far to much credence as an opponent.
Hand over Halliburton functions in Iraq to the US military and mideastern engineering firms. Let Iraqis rebuild Iraq. Reduce US funding for the purpose of rebuilding Iraq by a factor of 4, paid directly to locals. I expect this to get 10 times as much accomplished at 1/10 the cost.
Similarly localize the flow of FEMA money into the gulf region. Guarantee jobs to soldiers injured in Iraq, with preference for aquisitions roles in the Pentagon, such as making sure Halliburton recieves funds due to them.
Guarantee jobs to all Jersey Girls and similar in the DOJ and similar.
Arrest and prosecute George Walker Bush for crimes against humanity under US law, most notably the violation of the UN Charter, which is US law, in the failure to get Security Council approval of a violent invasion.
Signal the end of anglophone imperialist belligerence by isolating and peacefully dismantling the Zionist proxy political establishment in Palestine. Isolate Israel, in other words.
Pressure Israel to relinquish it's nuclear weapons. We can't disallow nukes to Iran et cetera if Israel has them.
Fire all Bush/Reagan appointees in the Executive Branch. Work diligently to destroy every legislator that voted for the invasion of Iraq, and are thus complicitous with a major war crime and disgrace of the USA. (Nov '05) There is one class of Bush appointee that is of particular interest for retention. Those who have quit or been fired. I am of course speaking of the Gunns, the refugees from a corrupted CIA, and so on, not the Michael "It's Not My Job" Brownies.
Unilaterally or otherwise liberate Darfur from the "Sudan" "government" in Khartoum. (I had suggested a no-fly-zone over Darfur. This has since been agreed to.) (July 05) There has been some semblance of a change of regime in Khartoum, I believe. I will revisit this issue as President with better information, and the understanding that the epochal cultural seam between East and West currently runs through Sudan. (Nov. 05) The situation in Sudan is deteriorating once again. Remind the Khartoum government that there are certain standards even in the Sahel that must be met to be considered the government of a people. Provide Darfuris with defensive weapons such as low-cost .22 caliber rimfire pistols and .22 caliber rimfire manual action rifles.
Un-offshore America's corporate tax base. I've heard sheltered offshore income is on the order of 10 trillion dollars. If that's even remotely true, fixing that problem can basically solve all the former USA's fiscal problems.
Visit New Orleans for about a continuous week, and render it's recovery sustainable. Address the subsidence issue of all similar regions. For New Orleans in particular, my current thinking is that it should be in-filled to sea-level using fill provided by barge and/or rail, beginning along levees and proceeding over the long term until the entire city drains by gravity. That is an earthwork in the few billions of dollars. The drainage canals also strike me as a severe mis-design, such they they should be dry canals with pumping stations at thier outfall ends. When I get to New Orleans, Senators Landrieu and Vitter will want to avoid me, which they are welcome to do.
Investigate allegations of bombings of the New Orleans levees.
FEMA's role in the early phases of an emergency is to be one of passive auditor and passive money provider, with the utter inabilty to prevent anything. FEMA must be prevented from preventing anything when hours are lives. FEMA must be enabled to smile sweetly and cut billions of dollars in checks to the likes of Gov. Blanco and Mayor Nagin without question, but with full expectation of reportage of where the money went when the dust clears. Think Federal Emergency Money Auditors.
The Coast Guard will be tasked with creating a hurricane follower fleet to provide most time-critical relief, communications and surveillance at the trailing edge of all hurricanes making landfall. Said fleet may be offered to neighbor nations in severe cases. Said fleet should contemplate a 'Katrita' scenario, and should contemplate high-wind aerial surveillance, water and other hour-timescale-critical supply, emergency ship-generated electricity, hospital capability, and a general expectation of the unexpectable.
Replace the Pledge of Alliegance with daily recitals of varying paragraphs of the Constitution. People that like oaths of subjugation can pledge their allegiance to the students every day. If you can't live without the Pledge of Allegiance, join the Marine Corps.
Provide every public school student in grades 5 and up a copy of the Constitution every year. Include dissemination of explanations of phrases like "writ of mandamus" and "letters of marque and reprisal" (which latter I personally don't currently understand, by the way) which occur in the Constitution. There is an effort under way to put a synopsis of the constitution on paper currency. This also might better be a matter of varying excerpts.
Overhaul the White House press corps to exclude the major war infomercial networks; Fox, ABC, NBC, CBS and so on. I'll probably limit that access to newswire services, Mother Jones, The Nation, Al Jazeera and so on. That is, credible outlets.
Reduce legacy government secrets as closely as possible to nothing. That is, I will massively reduce "classified information", particularly older documents, probably everything over 5 years old except for nuclear technologies and similar. Set up a periodic challenge and review system for classified information to remain classified on about a 5-year periodicity, with increasingly difficult tests and decreasing periodicity to remain classified as time passes. A jury-like mechanism may well also be useful for this purpose. This could be a Judicial Branch matter.
Semi-legalize drugs. Implement a closely controlled self-prescription program for adults to use such drugs as cocaine, heroin, marijuana and penicillin. That is, I will call off the corrupt counter-democratic drug war and de-glamourize narcotics. Drugs are for sick people. Sick people can obtain drugs cost-effectively in a healthy society. This will reduce the US black market economy, reduce the outflow of capital from the country, improve the image of small business, improve patient information recieved by doctors from their patients, vastly reduce the area of the world hostile to the US, reduce medical costs, reduce the use of needles, wipe out several rogue militaries in Latin America, and many other unimaginable benefits one would expect from choosing to discontinue losing a war. PCP and similarly destructive toxins will not be legalized, nor will truly sophisticated drugs actually requiring a doctor to even understand the accepted purpose of. I don't think any amphetamines such as meth and ecstasy will be legal (self-prescribeable) at this point. The LEAP group, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, leap.cc on the Internet, has useful information and contacts on this issue.
Remove the degenerate military term "intelligence" from what the CIA claims to do. Replace it with the degenerate military-style term "strinfo", a contraction of "strategic information".
De-commission the CIA entirely, and un-authorize them totally, immediately. Out them all in about 6 months. Re-deploy them if they choose to hang on under INS. The counter-proliferation forces may reconstitute under the Nuclear Regulatory Agency or similar. Otherwise, if a CIA agent or analyst wants to go to work for another strinfo agency, of which there are some 14 in the Executive Branch, they will have to get personal approval from me, and I'll be very busy with other things. The Legislature is currently (Sept. 04) fiddling with the CIA organizational chart. That's not going to make me listen to their garbage reports. (Nov 04) The CIA is basically fired anyway by their own total lack of credibility. With the internal shenanigans going on there now firing them all will probably be the most humane option. The current US intelligence problem would largely be solved by a President that can use a web browser and search engine. There will be some premium placed on counter-proliferation agents seeking re-assignment. (Nov '05) The CIA's concentration camp network is in fact not surprising, and doesn't effect this platform item. This item was based on such assumptions.
In particular, eliminate covert operations outside actual war zones immediately. Such behavior is well beneath the greatest and most powerful nation ever, and if you are so patriotic that you want to commit psychopathic acts for your country, you should be willing and expectant to die or spend the rest of your life in a small cage in Asia to do so. The US will only remain the world's sole superpower if it does so with some sense of fair play, and the CIA has no such sense.
Naturalization of undocumented immigrants becomes an issue of documentation. Biometrically identify every non-citizen on US soil I can get my hands on. Emphasize undocumented aliens in lieu of the dehumanizing term "illegal". Aliens are entitled to basic human rights, but security and other concerns greatly compromise further rights of aliens. Naturalization thus becomes a matter of good behavior for a significant period of time, i.e. a matter of very-long-term personal accountability.
Promote the vote for ex-criminals. There are too many election abuses now and abuses of the term "felon" to disenfranchise ex-felons. Conversely, soldiers can not be presumed to have any freedom from political pressure, and thus should not be allowed to vote. Conversely, voting by troops in war zones is fundamentally suspect.
Make federal election days maximal national holidays, in the sense that it shall be unlawful for any adult to not have 4 hours of time off from work on an election day during local polling hours, with severe fines for employers violating this. Employers are Republicans, and employees are Democrats. That's fine. What's not fine is one Republican being capable of denying a dozen Democrats access to the polls with a work schedule.
Require any election polling place, provisional or mail-in voting option to accept a plain piece of paper with handwritten votes as the required Constitutional default ballot, in addition to whatever other conveniences thay may provide, q.v.
Teach evolution as legally factual and the Bible, Talmud, Koran, the Analects, the Tao Te Ching, Aristotle's Ethics, Machiavelli and so on as ethics studies. Foster an Ethics Channel on cable TV.
Foster a newswire broadcast TV channel featuring AP and Reuter's text and video feeds. Possibly require such a channel to operate a satellite or cable TV company, and maybe an ethics channel as well. Newswires involved may include AP, Reuters, Al Jazeera, Pravda, the BBC and so on.
Offer Al Jazeera a UHF airwave TV broadcast slot in greater DC.
Establish a grade school diploma indicating that the holder can perform such basic tasks of self-actualization as reading a reputable newspaper, a roadmap, and the Constitution with some comprehension and compute unit prices for groceries in their head.
Legalize insider trading. Insider trading laws are unenforceable, are used as a political bludgeon as in the case of Martha Stewart, and give a false sense of security to small investors. In general, financial markets are too liquid anyway, in my opinion. Who owns what is not accountable enough in America, and people aren't involved enough in what they own.
Abolish leveraged buyouts if they haven't been already (Bobby). (Jan '06) The Economist Jan 7-13 06 opines that the leveraged buyout industry is currently forming a large unsustainable bubble.
Investigate Sun Myung Moon for illegal donations and information transfers to North Korea.
Actively campaign for Taiwan to adopt an official name not including the word "China". Taiwan is entitled to independance from China, as "Taiwan".
Eliminate the "not for profit" designation for corporations, churches, schools, trust funds and anything else. Charity is taxable income. If the government wants to subsidize something it can do so accountably, by direct subsidy. This is the only way to "close loopholes"; all of them at once.
A radically simplified tax/welfare system will include eliminating foodstamps. USDA infrastructure to distribute agricultural surpluses may be overhauled to provide a subsidized USDA brand, or not. The distribution of surpluses and so on may be further expedited by government grocery stores in low-income areas, or not. The extremely indigent will have federally provided debit cards via regular banks to regulate the flow of funds on a daily or weekly basis so they don't "sell their foodstamps" or put their SSI check in a slot machine all at once and so on. Similar controls will be created analagous to WIC. The total funds going to poor people will increase. The Texas Lonestar Card or whatever it is is exemplary, but should not carry the stigma of a special card. Also, foodstamps will apply to anything sold in e.g. a 7-11. The proscription of "restaurant food" runs to some rather ridiculous distinctions, particularly if you are homeless. In Texas, for example, a Big Gulp ceases to be groceries when you stick the straw in the lid.
Require businesses selling gasoline retail to have an easily accessible public restroom. (a lovely bit of civility from Texas State law). Some other type of business should be required to maintain public restrooms so that urban areas are well-covered.
Ensure voting systems accountable to the electorate nationwide, such as demo'ed by my own "votescript" (Internet search in 'groups' [Usenet] for 'votescript'). Invite the Congress to take over the Anthrax and Chandra Levy investigations using the U.S. Capitol Police and any Executive Branch law enforcement capabilities they may wish to avail themselves of, such as the Postal Inspector's forces. In other words, promote law enforcement upon the Executive Branch by another branch, perhaps with some improved latitude for the President to manage strictly executive affairs, such as e.g. promotion issues in the military. The underlying problem addressed here is that the balance of power does not extend to police power, which is excessively concentrated in the Executive Branch. Police power must be balanced for the overall balance of power to remain standing.
Put all Electors voting for Bush in the Electoral College in 2004 on a corruption watch-list.
Eliminate economic status requirements, particularly college degree requirements, from positions and licenses granted by the Federal government. This will be enforced very promptly in the US military as pertains to rank. No place needs to be a pure meritocracy any more than the US armed forces. That is, graduating from a service academy guarantees no rank. Such guarantees predate a literate general population, and are thus absurd. Conversely, certain rank may be provided via examination. Federally audit license testing, and allow associations to make up their own tests, if re-testing the licensed is periodic. Land grant universities will probably lose students, but gain some license testing business, for a net loss of gross business. This, however, is conjecture about what are basically market forces.
Plead to the Supreme Court to exclude Florida from the Electoral College for the rest of JEB Bush's governorship (slated to end in 2006) plus 13 years, for systemic election fraud.
Investigate and probably prosecute Katherine Harris for election fraud.
Investigate and probably prosecute the management of Diebold Corp. and similar for treason. There is preponderant circumstantial evidence of Diebold/Republican theft of the Congress in 2002, "The Diebold Bounce", and of course the evidence suggests quite compellingly that Kerry would have won a fair 2004 Presidential election by some 5,000,000 votes.
Explain and confirm that there are no proprietary software copyrights on election technologies.
Maintain a potent, progressive military with current uniformed personnel levels for the forseeable future but sharply curtailed systems aquisitions. Figure 50% of current aquisitions levels or less. Maintain current basic research levels, i.e. DARPA-type stuff. The mythology is that if you can imagine it, the US military has it. That's a valuable mythology, and doesn't require the belief that they have A LOT of it.
Explicitly allow articulating motor-tricycles that lean like a 2-wheeled motorcycle. Honda has made small vehicles with this characteristic. Require that motorcycles have 2 headlights 3 feet apart. These two items will save hundreds of lives a year at current levels of motorcycle ridership, which figures to increase massively.
Task the National Endowment for the Arts with promulgating cycluphonics, ratiolity, and the unwound cycle of fifths as a method of subsetting tonal clusters. http://linux01.gwdg.de/~rhohen
Get some computer programmers at DARPA to finish Ha3sm, Hohensee's Autonomous 3-stack machine, a computer operating system. ftp://linux01.gwdg.de/pub/cLIeNUX/interim/Forreal.tgz, or it may be archived at ibiblio, or email me.
Make it unlawful for entities other than individuals to contribute funds to political campaigns. In particular, corporations shall have no political funding rights. I thought of this myself, but the Tom DeLay case illustrates that Texas saw the importance of this issue some 100 years ago. I'm also very curious about how the whole board of directors thing works, or rather fails to work. My suspicion is that it would be beneficial to make boards of directors advisory only.
Conduct or review a variety of politically curious re-autopsies, such as on Nicholas Berg, Lori Klausutis, Vince Foster, Ron Brown, and the guy that was murdered and described as a suicide in Bush's State Department right in headquarters in Foggy Bottom, John J. Kokal, and many others. (Nov 05) There's also now a Colonel in Iraq in the notably odd suicide category.
Survey all cases of persons who have died in police custody in the last 10 years.
Establish a position of national participatory sports promoter and invite Cal Ripkin and/or Carl Lewis to take their on-going work Federal.
Establish a US Executive Organic Demonstration Farm within the Beltsville national agricultural research center and get all food consumed at the White House from that farm, or as close to that ideal as possible, with all deliberate speed and as the maturation times of various crops and livestock permits. The White House culinary staff shall advise on the crops and varieties grown, and culinary considerations of husbandry. Consultancy shall be sought from persons such as Kent Whealey of the Seed Savers Exchange.
Abolish Daylight Savings Time.
Convert the Executive Branch to use of open-source computer operating systems, such as Linux, BSD, or Plan 9 From Bell Labs. The military will be ordered to do so. I hope they aren't waiting for orders. Tip to unixphobes: learn the ed editor and turn off all servers on your local box. See also: my cLIeNUX Linux "distribution", particularly the "seedocs". cLIeNUX is probably archived at ibiblio.
Make all publications of the government available by FTP download from the Internet in effectively non-proprietary data formats. Make all Executive Branch websites lucid when viewed with the Lynx text-based web browser.
Implement checks and balances on law enforcement such that no jurisdiction can monopolize the evidence pertaining to any suspicious death. This item is also discussed under GENERALITIES q.v. The word "police" does not occur in the Constitution, and the balance of power needs to be extended to police entities policing each other, federally and between the States. Inter-State this can be limited to matters of wrongful death. Whereas the US is a nation of laws, the Constitutional "sovereignty" of the several States means a State right to lawfully execute, not to murder. I may require that all copyable evidence of any ongoing wrongful death investigation be submitted to the FBI for investigative and records redundancy. The Federal Government has an obligation to guarantee a republican government to the several States. That includes preventing a particular State from implementing a Murder Incorporated. When I leave office no State or branch of the Federal Government will have a monopoly on the investigation of any suspicious death.
Manage the White House grounds and monumental DC landscaping organically.
Increase personal financial accountability of members of Congress and lobbyists and lobbying organizations.
Implement a graduated progressive debt-monetization schedule for the Reagan/Bush/Bush National Debt to eventually eliminate the regressive debt costs left by the Bush Treason Family.
Generalize the definitions of criminal anti-competitive behavior to better protect small businesses and economic diversity. Lots of things e.g. Microsoft does legally will become illegal, such as kickbacks to system administrators. By the way, business owners need to not allow their employees to take kickbacks from Microsoft, on their own initiative. System admins like to keep people on their networks dysfunctionalized, so they like WinDoS for end users. Don't be such a sucker. Apple went to unix (MacOS X is a BSD unix with an Apple GUI) for a reason. Be advised also that Windows is still MSDOS and not suitable for connection to the Internet. (Jan '06) Bill Gates said recently that security is easy. Bill Gates is a pathological liar. The latest version of MSDOS (Windows 'Vista') was delayed for years by bug-chasing.
Provide two copies of every required schoolbook to every public student in America; a hardback that stays in the classroom and is not to be defaced and remains school property, and a Federally provided paperback that becomes the property of the student.
Task the dairy industry with deciding upon a variety of real natural fermented cheese to bear the legal designation "American cheese", and without compensation, remove the designation "American" from artificial imitations of cheese. Let fake cheese be "Amercun cheeth". For example, make burger chains call their "cheeseburgers" "cheethburgers", or use real cheese.
Uphold the contractual obligations of the USA while allowing certain bad investments to lose their value abruptly, such as companies constituting an excessive capacity to manufacture weapons, Halliburton, and so on.
Ensure that transportation policy emphasize pedestrians and other human-power transport first, then mass transit, then roads. I will encourage buses, in particular, publicly and privately operated. Running a bus line will become a right of a business entity wishing to do so, assuming reasonable safety regulation compliance. A useful counterexample to this is bus service around the University of Maryland, which is designed to subsidize the middle class at the expense of those most in need of public transportation, and thus most beneficial to society as a whole to recieve such services. The 86 Metrobus route in particular is not allowed to visit the College Park subway station, which is a strikingly arrogant perversion of the politics of public thoroughfares.
Establish a cabinet-level auditing office, with a general permanent mandate and authorization to eliminate corruption and improve efficiency throughout the Executive Branch via creative random audits of anything of interest for such audits.
Reduce the implementation costs of the tax system and the welfare system by simplifying the income tax code to a single simple formula with a positive component, formerly mis-named as the proposed "negative income tax". Thus there will be no brackets. The top tax rate should be about 50% and the top positive tax rate should provide a homeless man with about $10-- a day in 2004 dollars. Since I suggested this Bush has noted that Americans spend 6 billion hours, I believe it was, a year figuring their taxes. That's about $120B worth of wasted time.
(Another thing I'm looking at is a flat top rate of 50% so that a large segment of low income people pay no income tax, but that's just an item of curiosity so far. It depends where the level is that will produce revenue comparable to Clinton-era tax levels. Another idea here is to consider all gross revenue as income, rather than considering profit as income. At a much lower nominal tax rate on a much larger tax base, this can inately eliminate the distinctions between not-for-profits, businesses, and private parties. The distinction between business and consumer is abused in America. Regardless, any changes I make to tax codes will be huge net simplifications. Complexity itself is a reduceable cost.)
Assuming the same basic tax system as we have now, in terms of bracketed income taxes being the bulk of federal revenue, the top tax rate should be in the range of 40%, PLUS the percentage of debt service in the federal budget. The top tax rate is thus currently 60%, since debt service is roughly 20% of the federal budget. This allows Republicans to pay for their debt. A gradual debt monetization program may also be necessary.
(July 05) the above tax ruminations are vague, but rest assured, current Bush tax policy is a reactionary joke, and his mumblings about tax simplification since I proposed a tax simplification are to be feared like a tropical virus, and do seem to be recieving the appropriate reception, a horrified public recoil.
Eliminate parasitic "protectionist" tariffs, farm and other subsidies to the advantaged. Do what Reagan said, not what he did, and strictly limit subsidies to benefit the truly needy, i.e. put money where it is cost-effective for the populace, such as immunization programs and so on. Welfare is for poor people.
Require all products bodily ingested by humans, such as cigarettes, have their ingredients listed as is now the case for most foods. This will include products with long-standing exemptions from such requirements, such as COCA Cola. The regulation to list ingredients on medicines wiped out narcotics-based "patent medicines", and should have a positive overall effect on cigarettes and what is in them. Eliminate the current parasitic relationship between the government and tobacco company fines. By the way, the way I quit smoking for a year now is to chew tobacco. I chew Red Man, and chew small quantities I can swallow rather than spitting, thus avoiding horrors like spit cups. This is still poison, but I suspect it's much less harmful than smoking. It undoubtably is less harmful to me given the condition my lungs were in a year ago. They are far from healed a year later.
Outlaw kickbacks to doctors on prescriptions, with draconian penalties.
Re-outlaw consumer advertising of prescription (and proposed self-prescription) drugs.
Closely investigate a legal doctrine of reduced liability proportional to pre-existing risk. That is, childbirth and old age, for example, are risky. That risk in negligence cases pertaining to people at high pre-existing risk is to be taken into account somehow. Wrongful loss of life is to be pro-rated to 80 years, or ten years older than the decedent, which ever is greater. Or something like that.
Improve employability and general functionalization services to the homeless, literacy programs generally, and many other areas currently exhibiting barbaric and outrageously costly neglect. Another area that I personally find emblematic of the neglect the USA bestows upon it's helpless, my pet peeve if you will, is the condition of the average public basketball backboard. A decent outdoor basketball goal is a very cost-effective thing. Expect to see full regulation-dimensions rectangular backboards with straight rims appearing when I am President, starting around the White House. Maybe even nets.
Solicit involvement of professional athletes in adult literacy outreach programs. My personal experience with illiterate homeless men is they need a Ray Lewis or similar to help them with their phonics. The NBA read to Achieve program for example, should target adults.
Institute a sentancing premium on illiteracy for jail and prison terms, which can be overcome by learning to read while incarcerated. Make the premium greater for shorter incarcerations, up to 2 to 1 for sentences of less than 6 months.
Reduce disaster funding for semi-normal occurances like hurricanes along the Gulf of Mexico. (Oct '05) For example, FEMA flood insurance in the storm surge range should be capped at about $20,000--. For example, Trent Lott can rebuild his $3 mil mansion on the water on FEMA money if he had insurance, but if it gets blown away again he can only get $20k for it. You could call this "The Cabana Way".
Closely review the remedy ruling in the Microsoft anti-trust case decided by Judge Collen Kollar-Kotelly. My current thinking is that she failed her mandate to provide a remedy.
Emphasize North American and Western Hemisphere resources in US energy policy. That is, reduce or de-emphasize dependance on oil and LNG tankers.
Emphasize the Internet and other non-traditional channels in education. Formal education is a contradiction of terms. Also emphasize sports, gardening, and the arts. The teachers' unions and/or public schools are certified failures, and were of very little use to me after 3rd grade. That's is thiers to correct. I have education to worry about.
The validity of the Patent Office is to be subjected to fundamental review. In the mean time, certain areas of technology are grossly and absolutely inappropriate for patent protection. Genetics and computer software should not be patentable at all. There is an Amendment to this effect suggested below.
Foster a weekly blues jam and bar-b-que at the White House in the summer. The Office of the President will provide the duct tape. Eat Duct Tape; 200,000 Roadies Can't Be Wrong.
Manage my legislative agenda like an open source software project, with input from the general population via an FTP site and/or web wiki.
Make public spaces in DC available to the National Arboretum and Beltville research farm for planting and long term observation of ornamental, fruit and shade tree and shrub varieties developed at those facilities. Promote such plantings in low-income DC in particular. The program to develop a blight-proof American Chestnut tree should find fertile ground in DC, for example.
I am a personal fan of the National Zoo. I was quoted in the cover story "Gorilla Groupies" in the Washington City Paper years ago. Problems at the NZP will be attended to. The Zoo is in part a victim of it's own fabulous historical successes. The first white tiger in the US, Mohini Rewa, was a gift to the US from India. Now you can be killed by one in your own mansion in Vegas, or in it's cage in a Florida zoo, or at a petting zoo in the Midwest. A new mission may be in order. For example, the national zoo of the USA could be more North American in focus. Elk, moose, turkeys, dugong, manatee, coyote, paw-paw, chestnut, indigenous azaleas.... such things are as bizarre to most zoo-goers as a white tiger, and yet are indigenous to North America. The current plan for demonstration elephant breeding in downtown DC is a textbook lack of vision and sense of mission. Smithsonian people are quite full of themselves. Nothing a zoo does in terms of artistic display and clever signage compares to, for example, a prairie dog. Meanwhile, it is an absolute scandal that there isn't a bus or something up the length of the zoo. Rock Creek to Connecticut Avenue is over 200 feet of elevation change, quite the tough hike for fat Americans. (Jan '06) The Zoo has progressed. They have a Przywalski's Horse, for example. And a petting zoo. Nigerian Dwarf Goats. This is the former USA, politically, but it's still a wonderland.
I support statutes and regulations that result in a decrease in the gross bulk of statutes and regulations for the sake thereof, such as more use of parametric "schedules" such as the well-known "GS-16" schedule of government salaries. A quick glance at the US Code suggests that it could easily be smaller by a factor of 4 or more. Obfuscation is parasitic.
Gun control is a population density issue. A moose gun is insane in Manhatten. Being without one is insane in most of Alaska. A simple tax can be developed based on how many people are in range of a weapon. Let's say the tax is 5 cents a year for each human within range of a weapon. That's 20 cents for a moose gun in the outskirts of Nome, and hundreds of thousands of dollars for a moose gun in Manhatten. The details need some work, but therein lies the solution. There are a number of possible side-effects, like gun shops become inately rural businesses, which is a good thing. A gun collector may be forced to move to the country to retain his collection. There's also the issue of a one-second factor, like 5 cents for each round the thing can fire in one second, times population density. Thus automatic and semi-automatic weapons cost more in proportion to their fire rate. There would also be an exemption if the tax on a weapon is below a certain threshhold, such as $10--.
Reassess the health risks of cyclamates and other sugar alternatives versus aspartame. Note that Donald Rumsfeld was a key lobbyist for aspartame.
Abolish diplomatic immunity outside embassies, and transit to the borders from embassies. The US doesn't have royals, and doesn't acknowledge them before the law on our soil to any extent, except heads of state and other modern civil officers.
Change the names of Blair Mansion, the Ronald Reagan White Elephant and Internationalist Boondoggle Center, Reagan National Airport, the J. Edgar Hoover Building, and the Herbert Hoover Building. The Reagan Building might be a nice thing to name after Rosa Parks, for example.
Destroy the LBJ Memorial. LBJ has JFK's limo scrubbed. It's time to scrub LBJ.
Increase compensation to Federal elected officials. Congresspersons should make at least $500,000 per year. The current situation is like the elitist "amateurism" scam prevalent in track and field before Carl Lewis, and the myriad 'volunteerism' scams throughout DC and elsewhere. The fastest way to do this may be to encourage the States to pay thier representatives, who work FOR the States, by the way, large honoraria.
Closely scrutinize zoning laws. New Orleans is a nice place to try abolishing zoning laws, for example. One idea here is to make it illegal for any area to be precluded from use as a residence. This idea is to make it more problematic to pollute, create hazards, and to help reduce dependance on transportation. This may also have side-benefits for the homeless. Rather than making factories and so on uninhabitable, an officer of the operating company should be required to reside with his/her family at such locations, such as Union Carbide's facility in Bhopal.
Closely scrutinize the concept of personal trust funds.
Set up a history ftp/website in the Education department
Keep America's shipyards open at a low level with ships with potential civilian or humanitarian roles. The US doesn't currently need submarines, destroyers, aircraft carriers and so on. Freighters, troop ships and so on can continue to be built. They might be nuclear powered, but will be lightly armed, if at all. An oil-spill response ship might be worth consideration. Another possibility is a floating marine biology college. An oceanic debris cleaner of some kind perhaps. Suggestions welcome.
Provide a low-cost clinic option besides a hospital to every county in the USA (one rare good idea in the Republicon platform).
One immigration rule for all countries (per Al Sharpton). This is part of the complete breakfast of simplifying the US Code and the Code of Federal Regulations, as well as being a matter of fundamental racial fairness. This does not preclude special control of Mideasterners, who are currently worthy of special treatment for security reasons.
Promise exhibition MLB baseball games in Cuba if Castro adopts a constitution with real elections and so on. Invite Castro to the White House and smoke Phillies cognac-flavored Blunts to annoy him.
Heavily tax mineral resources extracted from Federal land. Distribute said monies to the regions said resources were extracted from. Oil money, for example, should remain in the Gulf region to a much larger extent than it does.

AMENDMENTS
I suggest several Constitutional amendments. The language in this listing is not necessarily exact, but is close. Actual experts should be consulted on the details.
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Employees or compensated agents of the Executive Branch at the time of an offense are excluded from the pardon power of the President for said offense. The Senate may pardon such persons in such cases if the pardonee and offense are explicitly named and the pardon approved by simple majory of a quorum of the Senate.
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Citizens may grow any species of photosynthetic plant in any quantity.
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The Judiciary shall have the power to declare periods of up to twenty years of Federal disenfranchisement over States or municipalities found to have harbored Federal election fraud.
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Letters patent shall not issue, and such letters patent issued prior to this Amendment shall be void, for any living thing and for any instruction sequence for computing automata, i.e. computer software.
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The Electoral College is dissolved. Voting for Federal officers shall be by direct nationwide tally. Failure of any single candidate to achieve a majority for a particular office shall be handled as prior to this Amendment.
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A voter in a Federal election may make one vote of approval for each of possibly several persons the voter approves of for each office contested. That is, one vote per voter per candidate.
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A State may secede from the United States of America by written notification of the President from the executive of the State in question. The President shall then withdraw the mobile military assets and munitions from the moribund region and release former citizens from that region from military service. Persons fleeing to the USA from the moribund region within a year who were citizens of the USA reclaim their citizenship immediately and inately.
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Children and genetic half and full siblings of a President are disqualified from becoming President or Vice President. Grandchildren are not disqualified.
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Handwritten paper ballots shall be accepted in any Federal election, in addition to whatever other means of documenting votes are provided.
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The offices of a national at-large Representive and three at-large Senators are hereby created. Every Federal 2-year election shall involve the nationwide election of the at-large Representive and one of the at-large Senators, in the usual Senatorial 6-year cycle. The first three at-large Senator's terms will be established one at a time in echelon over the three elections following the adoption of this Amendment. The qualifications, powers and terms for at-large offices shall be as per a regular seat in each body. Plurality shall be the sufficient margin to elect an at-large Legislator.
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One office of at-large at-random Representative is hereby created. The Congress shall by law formulate a random drawing or lottery to select a Representative to the House from among nationwide applicants for the office, such that each applicant has the same chance. It shall be possible to apply by post card, possibly in addition to other means. The qualifications, powers and term for this office shall be as per any other Representative.
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At noon on the first Monday after ratification of this Amendment, Richard Allen Hohensee of Adelphi Maryland shall, upon taking the Oath of Office of the President, assume the office of President of the United States, and then-Senator Russell Feingold shall similarly assume the office of Vice President, and both shall hereby be elected for the balance of the 2004 Presidential term. The term limit effect of this election-by-Amendment shall be equivalent to a one year emergency term, such that the electees shall be eligible for two more full terms if subsequently elected normally.
[The above language assumes ratification before the 2008 election.]
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The above herb amendment to allow growing any herb could be constructed so as to foster small exurban family farms and serve as a permanent seedbed for small businesses.
States are history. Maryland, for example, has a ridiculous boundary. Rhode Island, originally "Rhode Island Plantation", having the same representation in the Senate as e.g. California is ridiculous. A third house of Congress might be in order based on cities, which House of Cities might reduce the role of the Senate over time. The Senate is real good at singing "God Bless America" on the Capitol steps while the Pentagon burns.
GENERALITIES
Make my life as President extremely public, to the greatest extent possible consistant with national security. The adult public will be able to monitor most of my personal activity via live motion pictures. A Presidential webcam, so to speak, with a general and an adult outlet. Big Brother is already here. I give the people of the USA the option of keeping an unblinking eye on Big Brother if they are so inclined. (Nov '05) I think about this a lot. I don't know to what extent this is actually practical, but I think I can guarantee a 24/7 video feed from the Oval Office and main Cabinet meeting room, for example.
Marriage is not a federal concern. (The country seems to have already adopted this idea since I proposed it.) The proposed tax formula will provide positive taxes (back to the person) to dependants, not married couples per se. Children and the homeless will get the same subsidy per each. The homeless are societies children. The homeless will recieve a direct subsidy, while childrens' subsidies will go to thier guardians, in the normal case. Personal social and philisophical issues are a huge area the federal government can beneficially recuse itself from, and it bears mention that such issues are not mentioned in the Constitution. Monogamous marriage may or may not be the backbone of American society, but it is not the backbone of government, and certainly not the Federal government.
The legal tradition of the USA has some fundamental quirks going back to English Common Law that need fixing. Malice, intent, custodial relationships, sanity and other subtleties are sentencing issues, not corpus delecti. That is, intent is not part of the crucial body of a crime. In the jargon of computer programming, and Charles Moore (the Forth programming language) in particular, the criminal legal system is 'mis-factored'. "What" and "why" are beneficially separable, and this is a fundamental and systemic departure from English legal tradition. This tectonic problem can realistically be addressed within the confines of the Federal criminal code, or possibly the military code, and let the States observe the effects derived.
The US military will be excercized in the third world to project sustenance. That is, when the global situation allows, the US military will be used as a variant or branch of the Peace Corps. The courage of the military will be required to sustain losses to disease and to operate substantially unarmed in theaters where the US military is a semi-welcome guest and the mosquito, tse-tse fly and AIDS virus are the brutal de-facto overlords. Sustenance-projection exercizes in Africa may also be an important return stop for abused troops, such as those now in Iraq. (Oct '05) This item would have set a useful precedent and advisor cadre for the response to hurricane Katrina. (Nov 05) Jack Murtha alleges that a huge proportion of the force in Iraq is emotionally damaged. This is undoubtable. A buffer tour, possibly shorter than a normal tour, in some place like Sudan and/or Alaska is to be closely considered for troops returning from Iraq.
There is no specific labor policy as such at this time. In theory I do not support the distinction between labor and management, nor the distinction between business and consumer. Both distinctions are elitist. Labor interests should note my positions which are not explicitly labor initiatives such as the elimination of degree requirements from all positions licensed by the Federal government, the elimination of various subsidies to various sectors other than the working man/woman, the possible huge increase in manpower and facilities to the INS via the de-commissioning of the CIA, the improved immigration enforcement possible in the absence of a corrupt and bizarre drug war, the biometric identification of all immigrants, the reduction in impetus of Latin Americans to emigrate to the US in the absense of a corrupt drug war in their home regions, substantive measures to reduce health costs, the top tax rate of 40%+, and other policies that help the working man, woman or family substantively, but not necessarily directly or explicitly.
Guarantee a veto on any and every bill submitted to me longer than 50 pages in length, thus fostering clarity, modularity, efficiency and atomicity in legislation, and autonomy between the Executive and Legislative branches. The reader may note that this entire platform is in sync with such a policy.
The right-wing talking point of 'activist judges' is a good clue to something America needs; a more activist Judiciary. The ACLU is the former USA's de-facto federal public defender. They need collegial competition from a branch of the Federal government, probably in the Judiciary. There is a dysfunctional power slush-fund between the Executive and Legislative Branches, particularly as relates to the ludicrously misnamed intelligence community. The President needs more lattitude to coordinate the Executive Branch, while having less ability to warp extra-Executive functions such as special prosecutors. Special prosecuters should be a normal function of the Judiciary, i.e. not so special. Clarifying the balance of power between the three main Branches of government would benefit from a more active Judiciary, and greater police powers for the Legislative and Judicial Branches. Executive law enforcement agencies should have a rock-paper-scissors relationship with Judicial and Legislative police, perhaps expanded from the US Capitol Police (Legislative) and US Marshalls (Judicial?).
I oppose capital punishment. It's not cost-effective, and is distracting to Governors and Presidents, particularly those such as George Walker Bush who so richly deserve it. An execution, however, cannot remotely repair the damage caused by a George Dubya Bush, a John Wayne Gacy, or even a perpetrator of a single deliberate vehicular homicide such as Laura Welch Bush.
Enforce the law with emphasis on the most priviledged facing the closest scrutiny. This is my affirmative action policy. I am quite fatigued with rich white men like Skull and Bones (WH Taft, Bush 41, Bush, Kerry) giving me a bad name. I do not hope to abolish wealth. I hope to require it to exhibit some class or be abruptly impoverished. Wealth is a valuable incentive. A static stratification is not. If the big trees never die, you are not in a living forest. The US economy needs some lightning strikes, particularly to clear out areas that are natural business seedbeds like software and small farms, but not a huge forest fire. I don't have any major beef I'm aware of with IBM, UPS and numerous other large companies. The former USA needs an overhaul, but the engine block is more than salvageable.
I will conduct my personal relationship with the District of Columbia as an example of America's relationship with the world. The current federal relationship with DC is neglectful, arrogant and parasitic. Quite telling. The continued operation of Reagan National Airport is lethal arrogance, and strikingly well-named as such. With a smaller Air Force One, National and Andrews could switch roles. I will work to make every corner of the District of Columbia burst into bloom in every way. For example, DC has a worse-than-scandalous adult illiteracy rate, and a wealth of influential religious, sports and entertainment figures to become involved in correcting that national disgrace, among others. I am opposed to a new baseball statium in DC, however. DC needs a triple-A club in RFK, which is what I've said all along, and is basically what they have as of this writing with the Expos. You don't create a beloved pro sports tradition by fiat. (July 05) The Nats are in first place in the NL East. They are drawing well, and an argument can be made that the magic of RFK Stadium contributes positively to the Nats' success. I have proposed a low-cost soccer stadium so that DC United has it's own field. They draw well, but less than the Nats. Switching the field at RFK from soccer to baseball is a temporary measure. Arguments for a new stadium for the Nats are, as best I can see, rooted entirely in corrupt motives. (Jan '06) My original position on this issue continues to be validated by the bad waltz between MLB and The District. A new stadium is going to cost twice the original estimate. The city should pledge a new college-grade soccer stadium for DC United (the soccer franchise) and $100M for improvements to RFK, and tell MLB to take it or leave it.
I don't like the idea of homosexual couples adopting children, but I'd be hesitant to second-guess local social workers from the federal level.
I will try to do things in a way that displacements of workforces have a gains to go with the losses. The term for this would be assisted workforce migration. Allowing CIA employees to migrate to the INS, for example. Another example is the reduction of need for police that should accrue from civilization of the country's barbaric drug laws. The currrent prohibition means America has too many cops and corrections officers. Other initiatives in this platform indicate that the USA also has a severe dearth of border control personnel, and a huge dearth of bus drivers and other surface public transport personnel, so there is an assisted workforce migration possible. Cops will be offered free training for a CDL to drive buses, for example.
The Federal bipartisan "Republicrat" establishment is largely held together by a mortal desperation to keep a large volume of hideous secrets from the American people. As a fanciful example, the whole JFK/Bay of Pigs story falls together quite nicely if you place George "Poppy" HW Bush, our 41st President, in the sniper's nest in the Texas Schoolbook Depository. That is, if you make him the primary shooter in the JFK assassination. The history of secrets is that the reality tends to be many times worse than a private individual can imagine. Many such stories lie unexposed in classified materials. This is the most important thing the establishment loses if I become President. All those fabulously dirty secrets. This is how I will make my Presidency an outrageous smash success in a matter of weeks, if not hours. I'm not in the club. Many prominent Democrats are. My guess is that the last President with no shared skeletons in his closet was Carter, and perhaps Eisenhower before that. The government club's relationship with the populace is parasitic. Secrets are what you keep from your enemies, and the current establishment, we see in the news, is to a huge extent the people's enemy. I'm not.
The President is the central strinfo agent of the country. I will have a national security triumvirate to advise me on urgent security matters, who will take reports from the 14 strinfo agencies besides the CIA existing in the Executive Branch. Said triumvirate will all have interrupt-capable access to the President and Vice President.
The various main departments of the Executive Branch will be represented by a cabinet of some nine primary officials, representing the following topics of governance, and recieving reports from the pertinent existing departments; Audits, Commerce, Culture, Defense, Diplomacy, Health, Justice, Resources, Funding. Diplomacy will basically be the State Department as is, so the Diplomacy advisor will be the Secretary of State, but other primary advisors may represent an agglomeration of existing departments. Culture will be education, the arts, science, the FCC, and so on. A routine periodic "cabinet meeting" will be those 9 primary officials, the President, and perhaps the Vice President.
The better tone of American foreign policy was set by the Monroe Doctrine the better part of two centuries ago. The Monroe Doctrine has some very prominent misinterpretations, however. I believe the correct interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine is that the USA must consider free nations it's allies, and less than free countries less than nations. In a sentence, A nation is a secular democracy, and other areas are primitive countries and regions needing help to become or join the community of real nations. This latter category currently includes Israel, and to my knowledge, the entire Arabian Peninsula, as examples. My policy is to attempt to side with nature in all things, as best one can interpret nature, and to favor such regions evolving into nations, as is clearly the long-term trend of human history.

Rick (Richard Allen) Hohensee linux01.gwdg.de/pub/cLIeNUX/interim http://linux01.gwdg.de/~rhohen http://groups.google.com/groups/search?hl=en&q=rick+hohensee&qt_s=Search

Rick (Richard Allen) Hohensee
linux01.gwdg.de/pub/cLIeNUX/interim
http://linux01.gwdg.de/~rhohen
http://groups.google.com/groups/search?hl=en&q=rick+hohensee&qt_s=Search