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Back to the Forum Archives In a recent Forum essay I declared my candidacy for president. Following that, I presented an essay on some of the major issues we face. In this essay I want to continue with some of the remaining issues. I have already discussed terrorism. Now I want to look at Iraq as a separate issue. Until we invaded Iraq there was no threat of international terrorism from there. Hussein would never have allowed terrorists to operate there. The truth is, there was no threat to us from Iraq at all. It is likely that terrorist are there now because we created a power vacuum when we took Hussein out. We do not have the local power or support to prevent it. Given that, let us turn it over to someone who does have that power. We should get out of Iraq immediately under the cover of the UN. We can put the problem of the government to a majority vote. That is not our current president's plan, but it is not a bad idea. If the Shiites win, so be it. Better they should be murdering Iraqis than to have Iraqis murdering American soldiers. One thing we can know, if the Shiites come to power it will be the doom of the Bath party. They will all be murdered. Here is the conundrum. We cannot tell a Bath party guy or a terrorist from any other Arab. We don't know who our enemy is. The Shiites can tell the difference and they do know who their enemy is and they will act. If we had just stayed out of Iraq a while longer, all of this would have happened without us ever getting involved. So, let's get out and let it happen. Another major issue that affects most Americans is health care fraud. Health care Fraud is an ongoing problem. Again, I will address this in detail in my philosophy series when I get to it. For now we know the entire health care industry is bogged down in corruption and criminal dishonest. Many people want to single out particular segments of this industry like HMOs for scrutiny, but I think the dishonesty is much more widespread than that. We need to look at everyone involved, including doctors and medical facilities. In my essay on health care I will do that and I will offer some solutions which I will propose to congress for their consideration. We also have to look very carefully into other insurance fraud in all areas of insurance in this country. Along the same line, we also have to deal with those companies and executives who are defrauding their retirees after they retire. Canceling promised health care benefits after retirement is unconscionable. Those who do it should be in prison. I will propose legislation to make sure that happens. Related to these insurance fraud issues are the issues of pensions and Social Security. We know that many corporations not only cancel health care, they also steal pension funds. Some of these thefts are covert and some are flagrant, but they occur too frequently. They should not occur at all. Raiding of a pension fund is a criminal act. The stealing of pensions by corporations must be stopped. So, I will propose that congress create a law requiring employers to participate in a portable pension plan for all employed people. We can handle the plan the same as we should be handling social security. Once a company pays into a fund, there should be no way they should be able to take that money back. We must also make sure they pay in enough money to make it viable. Until now too many corporate actuaries have not been honest about this. Companies should still be able to use pensions as an enticement to attract employees by offering to pay extra money into the plan. As to social security, I favor turning it over to some investment firm like Fidelity or some consortium of firms like Fidelity. Let their experts handle the investment of funds and let the pay outs be determined by actuary realities rather than political expediency. This would still require the government to collect social security taxes, but the money would be turned over to the investors not stolen. There would need to be an interim period wherein the government would have to make up the difference until the plan became viable. That is simply in the way of paying back what was stolen. Now I want to examine a special case of Betrayal Of Trust (BOT). this is the situation we find too often when a politician or other person of power gets special treatment in court actions. A recent case involved a politician named Janklow. No one should ever be able to commit manslaughter and walk away with a few nights in jail with his days free. Because of the leniency of the court Janklow did exactly that. He committed negligent Homicide while drunk. He should be doing hard time in maximum security. I think we should make laws that would insure that and I will propose legislation to make it happen. I will also propose legislation to protect the public against careless liberal judges and parole boards. In my thinking, judges and parole boards who put murders and rapists out on the streets should be charged as accessories before the fact when they do it again. They always do. That little girl in florida who was murder would still be alive if we had a law like that. Now let's get to Cuba. We currently have an embargo against Cuba. It's as though we were still fighting the cold war and Cuba was still a threat to us. That is nonsense. The latest insanity of this came about when Cuban musicians were locked out of America and prevented from attending the Grammy awards. It's as though Cuban music is subversive. This all began when Batista was overthrown by Castro. For the Cuban people Castro was a liberator. He took out a very oppressive dictator. Administration officials have always denied this, but Batista was a tody for the United States commercial interests. He was an oppressor, not unlike Herod. Under him, American firms were exploiting the Cuban people. In my opinion, we should lift that embargo. We should have done that years ago. With communism alive and well, the case could be made that Cuba was a threat. That situation no longer exists. Cuba is a potential trading partner and a potential member of NAFTA. It is time we stopped letting a handful of expatriate Cuban rabble dictate American foreign policy. It is in our own best interests to lift that embargo and open normal trade relations with Cuba. Another important problem is our energy supply. America is in a desperate energy situation. We are totally dependant on oil for most of our energy needs. Too much of that oil is under the control of nations that do not like us. The situation is so bad that some have proposed destroying the Alaskan wilderness to grub out oil. I believe there are other less dramatic ways to solve our short term needs. There is oil in Texas, Mexico, and many other places under our control. It could solve our short term needs. The biggest problem is, we have no long term plans for energy or anything else. For the long term we need to invest money into devising alternate sources of energy. No matter what we do oil will eventually run out. In addition fossil fuel is inherently dirty and environmentally destructive. We need alternatives. We need to put our scientists to work. In a related area, our electrical power grid is obsolete and extremely vulnerable. That is a problem which must be solved. Again we need to put our scientist to work to devise alternative ways of powering America. Perhaps we need to look at supporting research into nuclear fusion. The point is, we cannot find solutions if we don't look for them. We cannot find solutions if we deny the problem. We must face it and deal with it. Except for war machinery we have neglected the funding of research. As a result we are in a desperate situation. In another essay, I will take a further look at research issues.
I will also cover our planning problem and what I call fringe
issues and pseudo issues.
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