State of my union

                When it comes to politics, I do not take any sides although I tend to bash Republicans more frequently. Me personally I think our democracy has become a joke compared to what it was supposed to be. It has become polarized and turned into a game of manipulation of the populace, public office has become a career instead of a civil duty. Corporations have taken a hold, lobbyists have spread like a cancer, and the dream is slowly becoming a nightmare.

                Our monetary policy has been put in the hands of a private bank called the Federal Reserve, our foreign policy has turned into a contest of measuring who has the bigger gun. Our infrastructure which was once considered to be state-of-the-art has become stagnant and out of date, yet our military has spared no expense. Not that I am against being able to protect ourselves, the soldiers that put their lives on the line are brave individuals and should be respected. However they should be rewarded with a country that holds no boundary with what it can achieve.

                I could go on forever with the things that are wrong with our country, I tend to do it a lot but mostly out of concern as to where we are headed. We are stuck with the same old ideas, and never any new solutions. I have always shared a few ideas with others about different solutions that I have come up with, that I would try to get implemented if I were a statesman or a civil servant. Which are the things I am going to focus on from here on.

                Our first main obstacle I see is the problem of career politicians, that usually tend to be law makers and lawyers, with a doctor here and a businessman there. Our founding fathers wanted people from all walks of life in public office. Our Senators and Congressmen, as well as the executive branch to be people who are scientists, teachers, engineers, farmers, business owners, doctors, lawyers, soldiers, builders, community organizers, religious leaders, philosophers, nurses, students, the elderly, the youth, the rich, the poor, everyone in between, so on and so forth. Having fresh ideas from all those different points of views would yield all sorts of ideas, not just the same old ideas, that have failed over and over.

                Not only do we need these fresh minds from all over the place, we need to get to the voting populace to learn about the people, and not worry about their political parties. In fact I think we should do away with political parties. What happens with our system of two parties, is anyone in the middle gets completely overshadowed, then you get two opposing sides that will not agree on anything or make much compromise. So many elected officials vote for issues strictly on party lines and policy, and less critical thinking for themselves, taking stands on their own grounds of morality.

                This is the 21st-century, the age of information and technology. People can literally access loads of information with a handheld device. This opens up so many doors for a democracy, it gives a chance for people to participate in self government in ways people could have never dreamed of 100 years ago or 200 years ago. We need to stop being afraid of changing things with the times. So here are a few things we should do.

·         Limit terms for all offices, including the Senate and the House, to just two terms just like the presidency

·         encourage people of all walks of life to participate in civic duty

·         eliminate political parties or at least their power when it comes to elections and debates

·         public funding for political campaigns where everyone gets the same amount of money, and allow no donations toward campaigns.

·         Leverage technology so people have access to information and more transparency than ever before

Another main issue that concerns me is our spending, I think we spend way too much money on defense. I think we can afford to slim down just a little bit and it would save loads of money. We do not need military bases all over the world. Ever since World War II other countries spend way less on the military's especially our allies, and let us spend all of our money to protect them. However I am not going to focus on this because I am no expert, and really am no armchair military genius or strategist.

Now a place where I have loads and loads ideas, comes with welfare, Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare, especially when it comes to the disabled. Which when people talk about these things they usually focus on children and the elderly, as well as medical expenses such as pharmaceuticals.

First I will talk about unemployment and people on welfare. We are currently in a job crisis where lots of people are unemployed. Our elected officials really just go with the two same answers, claiming that their solution works and the others solutions do not work. When in truth neither side's answers are actually working properly. That's why I like I stated earlier we really need some fresh blood, with new ideas and solutions. I think those will fix the short-term problems. However I foresee problems within the next 50 or 100 years. Probably even sooner these problems will arise.

For starters technology in manufacturing, especially with the complexity in which 3-D printers are becoming more and more advanced really quickly. In the future, manufacturing will be done pretty much completely by machines. This is going to cause a big gap in population and jobs available. Pretty much one day we are going back to come to terms with the fact there is not going to be a job for everyone. My idea for this is to change our food production systems, to be more locally based, where farms will be focused less on mass production on certain products that get delivered all over the place.

By simply having local farms focusing on local market to feed the populations, you open up a few more jobs in agriculture to try and maybe offset the jobs that will be lost due to completely mechanized manufacturing.

I also see another opportunity with people that cannot find a job and are relying on government assistance. There should be a system much like the military, that is a volunteer service for the government, but focused on development of infrastructure, like roads, highways, high-speed rails and stuff like that. And these people would get paid like soldiers do, and like soldiers they would be fighting for their country, but instead a fight to keep up with the rest of the world when it comes to infrastructure and making life easier for the citizens.

By doing it this way the government can control the pricing better, instead of contracting out these projects to private companies that charge extra money, and take their time for job security. There are lots of citizens out there that want to improve the quality of everyday life for themselves, their families, their neighborhoods, and near future generations. I think a system like this would also bring communities together, get people involved in working together, and promoting a sense of accomplishing something together.

Another big issue with all these people that are unemployed and need welfare, but are completely capable to work and for the most part want to work but have no jobs. I think we should set up programs where we open up volunteer work at national parks, and city beautification and cleanup, and things of that nature, instead of paying people to do those jobs we could have a system where people that cannot find jobs can do that work while they are on government assistance.

As a disabled person this next issue that I have an idea about has to do with Social Security and Medicaid. At the moment both of these programs were set up originally for the elderly that are going to retirement. It is also supplemental income for the poor and the disabled. Now as a disabled person that requires lots of medical care, but is completely capable mentally to work, and contribute to society I get stuck in the system.

Now you may be asking how does that happen, basically what happens is when you make over a certain amount of money or have over $2000 in the bank you will lose the services. Now the issue here is that fact that if I made say about $75,000 a year I would definitely not be getting Social Security and Medicaid. At that point one would not need supplemental income to live, however if someone lost Medicaid in my condition that salary would not be enough to cover nowhere near my medical expenses. For me to be able to be fiscally responsible on my own, and able to pay for nursing, medical equipment, visits to the doctor, transportation, stays in the hospital I would have to make over $400,000 a year.

This is the way this system does not work, I think for disabled people there should be a totally different system apart from Social Security but get similar benefits as Medicaid and Medicare but not so much salary based but based on the needs of the person. There are many disabled people out there that want to get out there and work and be a tax paying citizen but they just cannot get out of the hole they are in. I believe they should be guaranteed these benefits strictly when it comes to the health care portion. A disabled person did not choose their situation, but they have their right to make the best of what they have.

These are just a few of my ideas, I do not think they are exactly the answer to everything. However it is just a start and an example of how someone's ideas could come up with different solutions, in a future blog I might go into even more detail. For now however my brain has just put out a small portion of ideas. I hope everyone enjoys.