my father was a republican

he would have a simple set of real fixes for today’s political mess

1. tax law on a page, simple graduated rate, all income the same, no deductions, each order of magnitude for income results in rate increase – many other countries do this
2. no government schemes like development funds, pet experiments, law written for specific groups, no legislative horse trading for specific line items, no government giving out money for dubious purposes
3. stay out of the way, stay out of discussions between patients and doctors, do not try to regulate behavior between consenting adults, artistic expression, any private activity.
4. agree on a few core functions that are done best at a national level and fund them by taxing those that benefit
5. corruption between government and industry, kleptocracy, fraud of all sorts, theft of commonly held resources like the air and water, all need vigorous determined detailed openness with no no-bid contracts, and no sweetheart deals with politicians giving away our money to specific companies, not to mention war profiteering.

Healthcare

as part of the human race we know that a percentage of the population is born with have disabilities that require resources from the common good.  this is basic responsibility that all religions endorse, and most agree on the solution – namely those with the most wealth, the rich, have the greatest obligation – but we all have to contribute.  If the richest 1% according to their wealth paid a 3% tax on that wealth every year, we could free healthcare with a simple efficient single payer system – not a heritage foundation compromise.

Law and Order

while military industrial complex got subsidies for local police to acquire military weapons at the same time we have “republican”s cutting funding for judicial activities, tax collectors, fraud detection, mental health, rehabilitation, enforcement of regulations like worker safety, …

corporations should have the same simple tax structure, with the one exception being the percentage of revenue per country when taxing a multi-national company.  since large corporations benefit the most from strong military, law, and order – their tax can be ear marked for law and order

Economic development – Education, Infrastructure,

1) free education merit based upon IQ and other tests can be funded by the income tax

2) funding for transportation – roads, trains, airports, networks, …would be greatly increased to upgrade our crumbling infrastructure and create lots of economic activity – why are we pretending that interest rates are not at historic lows and that a substantial number of our bridges for example are not deficient is just to spite Obama, not because it isn’t a solidly republican virtue to want the best infrastructure.

3) basic research in all fields with royalty free licensing for discoveries would be increased by a real republican, think of republicans n the 60s-  avid supporters of scientific discovery and exploration, when did it become ok for republicans to not like consensus science?

Conservative principles

• pollution and despoiling of common land, sea, and air should not be tolerated – not on the basis of it being a good idea scientifically, but from a republican point of view because if you pollute you are stealing money from me as you are polluting the commonly held property i own
• never trust someone who claims god is on their side
• our privacy should be respected even if it means that some percentage of crime goes un solved
• we can not have a partisan judiciary
• there are vital functions required by government that should be done as transparently, efficiently, and effectively as we know how
• facts are facts, everyone needs the ability to have enough respect to acknowledge a fact even if it means changing one’s position, just shouting louder does not count

so according to my father’s republican’s definition, here is a summary of current “republican” issues:

• gay marriage, a true republican says that government should stay out of any discussion regarding what goes where between consenting adults and it is for religion to have opinions on appropriate couplings, not government
• abortion, a true republican would try to make abortion rare, but rejects any interference between a patient and doctor by government
• immigration, a true republican humbly remembers their own immigrant roots, and just tries to make the realities as transparent and humane as possible while eliminating as much criminality as possible
• guns, a true republican would hunt if they needed the meat, but an obsession with guns is not healthy – do you feel safer having a partly trained minimum wage guard armed somewhere like a Mall?,  paranoia, fear, alienation are real and cause real deaths, some black helicopter UN conspiracy what would require armed resistance is nutty, delusional, irrational thinking
• terrorism, a true republican would recognize what needs to be done, namely a multi-pronged approach of firstly vigorously pursuing criminals, and secondly understanding the basic pressures that drive terrorism.  Basic pressures including kleptocracies created by badly conceived lines drawn by french and british diplomats that need to be replaced by linguistic and religious affinities and democratic elections.  An equally basic understanding is that the arrangements for oil extraction and profit continue to undermine democracies and the natural interests of the local populations.  also there some arguments such as between sunni and shia that you do not want to be in the middle of, as my father might have said – that is one hornet’s nest you do not want to stick your hands in.  on the other hand we could easily recognize that profits from drugs fuel much of the active war these days, so why not legalize and regulate drugs like we do with alcohol and tobacco and remove the funding sources for terrorism.
• war, a true republican would never start a war until all alternatives had been tried 7 times 7 times.  war profiteering would be vigorously prosecuted, the damage done by interventions to our national brand world wide are long term and terrible, innocent americas to and abroad in the world generations from now will suffer as a result of the stupidity of invading iraq.
• torture, a true republican would not permit our government under any circumstances to torture, zero tolerance
• funding for elections, a true republican would want full transparency of donations, with support for non-partisan education of qualifications and proposals of candidates
• taxes, a true republican would support the one page, no exceptions tax policy, fairness requires transparency and simplicity, taxes buy civilization, we stop supporting taxation when we do not trust the system to be fair, our current system is the opposite and just cutting the top tax rates fixes nothing, in fact it makes things worse

– conservative value voters and the attack on christianity, a true republican would be the first to say that religion and politics do not mix, and in particular any politician that claims god is on their side to be tarred, feathered, and ridden out of town.