Elections and Government

1. Eliminate the two-party system.  Our representatives need to vote their conscience, not the party line.  If we don't like what their conscience decided, we'll vote them out.
2. Eliminate political donations.  All candidates, once they reach a certain threshold (signatures?), get the same amount of campaign money, ad space and air-time.  The money is from a federal coffer, the ad space and air-time is donated equally by media outlets.
3. Eliminate professional lobbyists and special interest groups. 
4. Federal elected officials can only serve for a total of 12 years.  3 four-year terms for both the House and the Senate.  After that, move on.
5. Eliminate the ability to tack on unrelated provisions to a bill that's being proposed.  For example, adding a corn subsidy to a defense spending bill.  Each bill must stand on it's own merit.
6. Make it illegal for House or Senate members to sell or trade their vote.  For example, "I'll vote for yours if you vote for mine."  Again, each bill must stand on its own merit.   
7. Supreme Court Justices serve for 10 years, not for life.
8. Eliminate the electoral college.  Popular vote nationally should get the presidency...period.    Thankfully, many states are moving in that direction ( National Popular Vote Interstate Compact - Wikipedia.)
9. Make gerrymandering illegal.  Congressional seats must represent the actual populace.  If 54% of your population is Democratic, they should get 54% of the congressional seats. Same goes if 54% of your state's population is Republican.  Both sides redraw districts to help themselves and hurt the other side.  Districts should be drawn as uniform shapes (squares?) starting from a central point and emanating out until you reach a certain population (whatever is appropriate for that state).  Then you start a new district.

The IRS cost $11.8B to run in 2019.  The tax code is RIDICULOUSLY huge and complex.  Congress spends WAY too much time thinking up NEW taxes.  Companies employ an army of tax preparers and lawyers just to squeeze more nickels out of the system and, in the end, the wealthy and large corporations do not pay their fair share.  This needs to change and we need to put our government to work on more important matters.

1. Switch to a Federal Value-added Tax (VAT) on ALL goods except food.  No exceptions.  No tax breaks for charities, etc.  Once you allow any breaks, it will be taken advantage of and people will find loopholes.  
2. A VAT is 100% equal for all.  You buy a $75,000 house, pay the tax percentage.  You buy a $10,000,000 house, pay the same tax percentage.  But because you are spending a lot more, the tax dollars collected will be more.  Thus, those who can afford it will pay more.  Again, no exceptions.
3. A VAT taxes ALL industries equally, including illegal ones.  You want to buy a speedboat for your drug running? That boat gets taxed.  You run an all cash business and don't report most of what you earn?  Guess what?  You want to spend what you earn?  You'll get taxed.  This is much more fair than it is now.
4. And, unlike the current system, you won't get punished for working more.  If someone already works 40+ hours and takes a side job on the weekends, etc., it really isn't fair to tax that income as well, they've already paid their share.  With a VAT, you could keep 100% of what you make on that second job.

The rise and dominance of the stock market over the past 40 or so years has caused several major problems with the American economy and, by extension, for every American as well.   

1. Depending on who you ask, US stocks are 70-90% owned by institutional investors (mutual funds, hedge funds, etc.).  So, if all that stock is owned by these (relatively few) large firms, guess who gets to go to the Board meetings and tell the companies whose stock they own what to do.  
2. Tying any employee's compensation (especially the CEO's!) to stock performance should be illegal.  It encourages those in charge to make decisions about the company that may temporarily boost the stock price but could very well be bad for the company in the long run.
3. Letting the stock price dictate what companies do is also VERY bad for long-term planning and research and development.  CEOs (especially with their compensation on the line and a touchy board) are almost forced to be penny wise and pound foolish in order not to cause dips in the stock price.  Sure, there are exceptions, but in too many cases, the "right thing" for long term growth isn't done because it won't look good on the next quarterly earnings report.  
4. The stock market is like trading sports cards, the only time the company that actually sold the stock (or the trading card) sees ANY money is when it's first sold.  After that, it's just middlemen making money on passing around the piece of paper.  I'm not the CEO of a large company, I'm not a billionaire but I truly don't understand why ANYONE would take a company public just to get that quick cash infusion.  Yeah, it might be a great path for getting your billions and retiring but it's not healthy for the company in the long run.  
5. The average American should NOT be required to play in the stock market in order to grow their retirement funds.  Since the 1960s, gone are pensions, gone is company loyalty and almost everyone is forced to hope for the best with their 401(k).  Yeah, it TENDS to rise but god help you if you have to cash out during a down-turn.  Remember, with stocks, it only matters when you get in and when you get out.  Everything else in between doesn't matter (barring significant dividends but most of us don't own enough of anything to get dividends that are more than a few hundred dollars a month at most).  I'm not a financial advisor, but for me personally, I moved most of my 401(k) to a self-directed IRA and bought rental properties.  
6. This is a great read that does a very good job explaining what's happened to regulation, the middle class and the American economy in the last 100 years:  Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A Recent History: Andersen, Kurt: 9781984801357: Amazon.com: Books.  

A free and honest press is the only thing that keeps a democracy a democracy.  Without it, a dictatorship is inevitable (as in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia).   The press is the only thing that keeps governments (somewhat) honest.  Without it, all we have is what they want us to know, and that's not good.  

That said, immense damage has been done to the general public trust of the press and this MUST be restored.  

1. Issue certifications for news organizations and reporters.  These are required but CANNOT be denied to anyone who can prove that they are, in fact, a news organization or a reporter.  The key here is that the initial certificate can't be denied - - e.g. just because the government doesn't LIKE what you say doesn't mean they can deny you a certificate.  So, what's the purpose of this certificate?  It CAN be revoked if the reporter or the news organization are caught reporting non-factual information multiple times.  If that's the case, the certificate gets revoked and we, the news-consuming public, can tell who is trustworthy and who is not.  Even if you lose your certification, you can still go out and say what you want (on the Internet, etc.) but everyone will know that you're not trustworthy.  The panel/jury that presides over certificate revocation must be impartial and non-political.  
2. Restore trust in the "anonymous source".  This is a very touchy but critical item.  Reporters need to be able to use anonymous sources because that's where a lot of their real "news" comes from.  But, how do we, the public, know they're not just making up this "source"?  I believe we should have a "notary public" type of service for anonymous sources.  Basically, the reporter would bring the anonymous source and their identification (driver's license, work ID, etc.) to this "notary".  The notary would verify that they are who they say they are and then assign a unique ID to the interaction and the reporter MUST include this ID in the article/news story.  To protect the source, the only things recorded are the reporter's name, the unique ID and the date/time.  NOTHING else is recorded in any way about the interaction - - no names, not the ID used by the source to verify themselves, nothing.  The key here is HUGE penalties for the notary if they are every caught divulging any information about a source or verifying a source that shouldn't have been verified.

 A college education should be accessible to all who have the aptitude and desire for higher education (though I do believe there is a related problem where companies require college educations for jobs that don't really need a college education, just because they can.  But that's a whole different problem).  My school was $11,000 per year when I started in '87, it rose to $18,000 by the time I graduated - - that's crazy!  Well, guess what, for 2021, it's $67,000!  I'm guessing that the teachers' salaries have NOT gone up at the same rate. It's just a Liberal Arts school - - but it's apparently a lovely country club now, too.  

1. There are just too many colleges in the United States and they are just competing on what the campus offers, not the education.  Yes, that other stuff has SOME value, but you are there for an education.
2. The endowments of schools should be limited.  Endowments should only be allowed to reach a certain point (say 5 years' operating income or some such), after that any income to the endowment can only be used to reduce student costs.  For example, Harvard's latest financial statement Financial Report FISCAL YEAR 2020 (harvard.edu) has their budget at $5.4 billion but their endowment is $41.9 billion.  That money should be used to directly benefit the students.  How many students of middle-class parents have the grades to get in but couldn't afford to go to an Ivy League school because they won't get the financial aid (this is exactly what happened to my niece)?   The very rich can go, the very poor can go, but nobody in between can afford to go.
3. Eliminate sports scholarships (similar to what Division 3 schools do - - no scholarships).  Sports scholarships just water down the quality of the education that the non-athlete students receive.  
4. Create "sports schools".  If you want to play football, go to a football school and focus on football.  Don't pretend to focus on psychology or philosophy or whatever.  You are there for football and that's ok!  But, you will get an education tailored to your needs as an athlete.  Since 99% of those you play college football won't ever play professional football, their education will be designed on giving you a safety net by teaching you the business side of the sport you love (broadcasting, management, training, sports psychology, etc.).  
5. Teach children in high school how basic finances work.  It's generally considered a bad idea if you take $200,000 worth of debt for a Philosophy or English Lit degree where you might get a starting salary (in a probably completely unrelated field) of $50,000.  But taking $200,000 worth of debt for a career path that will pay you $125,000 a year to start and with great growth potential isn't such a bad bet.  But kids (and their parents) need to understand this and learn how to make sensible choices.

Sports and entertainment are critical (and fun) parts of our lives and that, in and of itself, is not a bad thing.  What IS bad is the inflated salaries and statuses of these performers.  There is no reason for these performers to be making 20 or 30 million a year.  Of course, the purely capitalistic argument goes something like "Well, they make more than that for the owners of the team (or the record label or the film studio or whomever) so they deserve their share.  And I agree!  BUT, to give them that salary WE (the average person) are paying $16 to go to a movie, $15 for a beer at a stadium or $250 for a concert ticket.  A family of 4 should not have to pay $600 or $700 to go to a sporting event!  So, how do you fix this?

1. Cap performers annual salaries.  Let's say that number is $5 million per year.   THAT'S AN INCREDIBLE SALARY!  If you asked ANY SINGLE ONE of these performers, when they were 17 or 18 or whatever and preparing for their career if they would be happy with $5 million, they would unanimously say "yes!"  Hell, I would have played professional hockey for $150K, no problem!  So, the #1 hockey player in the NHL gets $5 million, the #2 gets whatever below $5M his bosses are willing the play, the #3 player gets something below that and so on.  Unfortunately, the entertainment industry is just one of those places where capitalism doesn't self-regulate very well and some guardrails need to be put in place.  
2. Money saved on salaries MUST be used to reduce the ticket and concession costs proportionately.  If the owner's team salary goes down $30 million for the year, the team MUST take in $30 million LESS from all other revenue sources.
3. I realize that some of this might only come about if we, as the consumers, boycott their overpriced offerings for a significant period of time.
4. Eliminate ticket scapling.  It's not fair to the performers (they only see income for the face value of the ticket, not the value on the secondary market).  It's not fair for the consumers since automated bots buy so many of the tickets and the average person never even gets a shot at a good seat without going to the secondary market.  This can be solved by just PUTTING A NAME ON THE TICKET WHEN IT'S PURCHASED.  If it's not your name, you can't use it!  If you can't go to the event, you can return the ticket to the seller (Ticketmaster, whomever) for a FULL REFUND and then the ticket gets offered back up for sale again at its original face value.

1. The President is elected for one 6-year term.  That's it.  No second term, no need to spend half of their first term campaigning for the second term.  No need to worry about what this or that policy would do to their re-election chances.
2. Sitting Presidents cannot campaign for or endorse other candidates at ANY LEVEL.
3. Sitting Presidents cannot use social media directly under their name nor can they announce policy or staffing changes via social media.  The "press conference" process has to be respected and reporters have to be given a chance to ask questions, etc.
4. Immediate family members of the sitting President may not serve in the administration in any capacity, paid or otherwise.  We elected you, we DID NOT elect your family.
5. Candidates for the Presidency must release their tax returns when announcing their candidacy and again 6 months prior to the election. 
6. The "nuclear football" can only be used (without a prior declaration of war by Congress) in response to a confirmed nuclear attack from a foreign government.  Any other use requires Congressional approval.
7. A President-Elect must divest himself/herself of all personal business interests.  Once his/her term is over he/she cannot return to any ownership interests in those businesses.  
8.  All major appointed positions (such as Attorney General, CIA Director, Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, etc.) must be taken from within that department (if possible) or have provable, relevant experience before they can even be nominated.  

1. Make daylight savings permanent.  It would make programming computers and clocks simpler, people would sleep better.  Just stop messing with the clocks already!
2. In fact, get rid of time zones altogether.   What would happen if we abolished time zones altogether? | WIRED UK 
3. Add a thirteenth month - - there are 52 weeks in a year, 52 divided by 4 is 13.  Every month would have 4 weeks, period.  Well, except 1 month would have 4 weeks + 1 day (28 x 13 is 364 so there's one more day to account for and then leap year, too).  But still, that's easier than the wacky 28, 30 or 31 day system we have now.