If you ran the country...

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And who would judge how good your genes are? You?

ruveyn

I'd follow the Kyoto protocol, put Wolves back on the Endagered Species list and outlaw aerial hunting. Increase protections for other endagered species like Polar Bears. invest in green energy, hopefully in a smarter way than the Obama administration.
Appoint judges who are pro First Ammendement, the environment and women's rights. Either use a Richard Dawkins book or a Wiccan text to take my oath of office to really bug the Christian Fundamentalists. Ban offshore drilling and fracking. Make gay marriage legal in all 50 states and territories. Fund Science a lot more.

I would have large effigies built and erected of myself, would change the national anthem to "Hail JNathanK, your beneficent leader!", and would change the Gregorian calendar to be based around my rise to leadership. muahahahahahahahaaaaa!

Straight cut. None of those ridiculous skinny fit, flared or pre-worn ones. And to be worn at the waist, not round your knees.

Oh... genes...

I would pass a law on the spelling of Mohammed. There are at least five different spellings out there, maybe more. Come on people - pick one!! Somehow stuff like that annoys me more than murder and racism.

Oh, and the abolition of Eastenders (non-UK readers, your life is much happier for not knowing it).

I would:

Vastly increase funding to Canada's space program to achieve:
-Domestic launch capability
-Domestic manned flight
-A Canadian space station in orbit of the moon providing fuel to other nations' missions or private companies
-First manned mission to Mars
Undo basically every BS bill that Harper has passed
Vastly increase funding for pure research in addition to dedicated research
Acknowledge several unrecognized nations around the world
Encourage more domestic military hardware production so as not to have to rely on US or European hardware.
Increase size of Canadian military (all branches) but invest heavily in unmanned/autonomous robotics and other advanced concepts that require less manpower
Legalize same sex marriage
Grant Nunavik (Northern Quebec) status comparable to Nunavut
Raise quality of life on native reservations and encourage job growth and investments in them
Legalize marijuana for distribution through provincial authorities comparable to the ones that exist for alcohol, and make virtually all laws applicable to alcohol applicable to marijuana
Legalize marijuana for home-growth but require licensing process comparable to alcohol microbreweries to sell it

Probably a lot more...

Balanced budget: This would become SOP no matter what it takes. If we don’t have it we don’t spend it and we would never borrow it.
Welfare reform: I don’t think we can get rid of it at this point but it can be greatly reformed. Recipients that can work would work doing something constructive. Publicly needed tasks like picking up trash along roads and parks, painting, planting trees, working at animal shelters, etc... The handicapped can do admin type work.
Military: A very strong military because in the real world might makes right and there’s no way to sugar coat it. With all the welfare reforms we would have more money to for defense (or offense for that matter) spending.
Industry and science: Big on that under my monarchy and with less government intrusion. More jobs and with the tax revenue it would help considerably with our budgeting issues. We’ll be at the forefront of new technology in every endeavor.
Environment: Well, we have to live here but on the other hand we still have to live here. There will be mining and oil drilling with a vengeance to support our booming industries and trade but it will be done with as little environmental impact as practical.
Education: Much more emphasis on useful curriculum in the form of science, math, industrial arts, history, ROTC, etc… and little to nothing in the form of useless sociology sh!t. It’s up to the states and districts how they go about implementing that, though, since it’s mostly their money paying for it.
Space: Back in space in full swing. Emphasis on microgravity and life sciences research.
Also, of course, continued militarization of space.
Crime: I don’t want more laws, cops, or prisons because we have too many of all three as it is and to no apparent avail.
The war on drugs would be over.
Individuals would be free to protect themselves responsibly (e.g. neighborhood watch programs, armed citizens, etc…)
Prisons would become less financially burdensome and institutions for higher criminal learning since they would be closer to self-sustenance through agriculture programs. The prisons will grow their own food on prison land and sell the surplus on the free market to help pay the utilities and other necessary expenses. They’d be too tired from gardening, fence mending, and herding livestock to get in trouble. Anyone that tries to escape gets shot dead. Anyone that successfully gets past the wire and is re-captured is brought back and shot by firing squad. Only a warden and small cadre of state corrections officers to supervise at each prison and things would be run mostly by trustees.
Taxes: Pretty much no IRS or not as we know it. Flat tax rates on individuals and industries. Some way (ANY way) to simplify the process and also to keep more money in the pockets of those who actually earned it.
Human rights: What about them? We have a constitution already so that will have to suffice the way it is. There’s not going to be any taxpayer money or government agency resources wasted there.
Foreign relations: We’ll maintain friendly relations and trade only with nations with a pro-American history. There will be only two kinds of foreign nation in the world; those who are for us and those who against us. This is where the benefits of becoming the military, industrial, and financial powerhouse of biblical proportions comes into play. It goes without saying that the U.S. would be completely out of the U.N. and the U.N. would be completely out of the U.S.

I could add more and elaborate more on each but this is the gist of it.

I'd start by demanding that all attempts to censor the internet or otherwise kill freedom of speech or freedom of expression be stopped and that any bills that propose it will immediately be denied. Next, I'd demand that 'legalese' be outlawed and that things such as bills and ballots be printed with plain English rather than a bunch of misleading pretty words. Then, I'd demand that there be equality for employees of different genders, races(or as my mom likes to say, 'culture groups'), sexual orientations, etc. and demand that they receive the same amount of money.

Another thing I'd do is I'd make executions public again as a means of making sure people know what happens if they commit a severe crime. Not only that, I'd make it mandatory for school administrators all over the country to be paid the same salary as teachers. Failure to do so results in immediate termination of their job. I'd also put more money into education and make it mandatory that every school have at least one art program. The more art programs they have, the more money they receive. I'd also make it so that children actually learn stuff they can use in their future lives instead of studying for pointless tests that won't amount to anything in the future. With high education, the crime rate will plummet, and the graphic public executions are a means of ensuring that should there be anyone that slips through the system and becomes a criminal will be punished harshly should they do something like kill or rape people. Prisons will become adult education facilities, since I think most criminals are people who, for whatever reason, slipped through the cracks and had to resort to crime in order to survive. The ones who are legitimately disturbed will get the medical treatment they need in order to neutralize any threat they could pose. We may not be able to detect serial killers, rapists, arsonists and con-artists at birth, but we sure as Hell can help them later in their lives.

I'd also make healthcare easier to get. With the proper tests, people can quickly be identified for whatever conditions they might end up with, be it poor eyesight, ADHD or things like that, meaning treating those conditions will become much easier. Also, unusual/unorthodox treatments will be given full support if there is proof that they work(for example, neurofeedback, which is a drug-free method of treating conditions like epilepsy and ADHD without drugs. Being an autistic woman, I found it really helped me...also, it's pretty fun!). Hell, while I'm at it, I'd get America off the petroleum teat and onto something that'll either slow down environmental damage or reverse it by getting car companies to make cars that run on other fuels. Wouldn't it be awesome to have a car that actually released oxygen into the atmosphere instead of smog?

Finally, I'd work on eliminating the root cause of things like wars and discrimination: hate. I'd put measures in place that will help people not hate their fellow man and, hopefully, prevent wars and strengthen diplomatic relations with other countries.

Hopefully, I'd be able to fix America and maybe improve the rest of the world.





Yeah, not like it'd ever happen. America's gonna die and the government is gonna be the one responsible for killing it and all of our rights.

Socialized medicine.
High import tariffs to encourage domestic manufacturing.
No military interference in any foreign country unless there is a direct threat to my country, in which case the offending country will be nuked.

the people are responsible for letting the government kill.
of course, there are rogue elements within any government but given enough time they are supposed to be checked.

oh, and if i had my way, i'd make all of the rules, regulations, etc, Be Machine Readable.
That's right, machine readable tax code. no grey areas.

Everyone must stop smoking cannabis. If not, I will track them down on the internet and rant at them occasionally.

Your economy will be in full-scale depression within five years. Probably less if you are as aggressive with public sector spending as I expct you would be. On the longer term, government institutions would fall to warlordism, and you would either have to turn your own troops on your people to maintain control, or face a full-scale revolution. Other countries have tried such massive retooling of their institutions, and it has never ended well.

This looks to me like a very short road for annexation by Canada and Mexico--well, the best bits, anyway. The rump that neither of us would want can be left to the warlords.

This is assuming I'm keeping capitalism, which I'm not sure about. This is also assuming you're not trying to make me king of britain. This is all from the position of prime minister.

1. I would declare a republic and abolish the monarchy
2. Remove the true upper class (lords and barons and the like)
3. Reform the house of lords into an elected senate (house of lords is the equivalent to the U.S. senate, but currently unelected and full of bishops and aristocracy.
4. Make the UK secular
5. Develop a secular constitution thats human-rights-heavy and supports gay marriage and freedom of information.
6. I would nationalise and unify banks and public transport. Keeping in mind the lack of competition, I would keep prices low and standards high artificially.
7. Immediately stop the impending privatisation of the NHS (tax-funded health service), bulldoze all hospitals and start again with a centralised system with much higher standards than before.
8. Fund development of high-speed spaceships and rockets (capable of almost lightspeed), and more long term, fund research into FTL travel
9. Establish colonies on the moon and mars to solve overpopulation
10. Buy greece
11. Ban private schools, and review the national curriculum
12. Ban the teaching of religion in schools (obviously include a balanced and secular view of religion. The ban would be on teaching religion as truth.)
13. Replace all public transport drivers with computers to minimize accidents
14. Reform voting system so that all MP's are not members of a party, and accurately represent the things they stood for at election.
15. Create enough jobs for people
16. Make sure everyone gets a good education, ensuring that those with learning difficulties and different styles of learning are provided for
17. Make university free
18. Make basic housing free - paid for by taxes (this is basically changing the economic nature of the state, raising taxes to the point where everything you need can be paid for by the government, except for food, and food and everything you want can be paid by the remainder of your wage.)
19. Fund the development of nuclear fusion power to replace oil
20. Ban petrol and diesel cars

That's a lot of effort in itself. Expect heavy resistance - those lords have a lot of land and a lot of money. Many of them own large chunks of big businesses, including the media. Expect to lose power very quickly!



Expect conflict from a significant proportion of the electorate. Many of them are religious. Even many of those that aren't will object to your attack on religious freedom. It's rather ironic that your proposal is to bring human rights and freedoms!



Thus forming a government monopoly and heavily restricting private initiative. And low prices/high standards do not go together easily - in order to have one, you'll normally have to sacrifice the other. Certainly when you're starting out you'll have high prices and low standards, because even then the treasury will be taking a heavy hit to get all this sorted out. The impact on infrastructure will be enormous. Expect economic disaster.



Bulldoze all hospitals? Seriously? You think the buildings themselves are somehow fundamentally wrong?
Numerous governments have tinkered with the NHS. Centralised, decentralised, privatised, public... it can never work perfectly, because everyone gets sick and eventually everyone dies. It constantly needs money and there's no (direct) return on that. The best thing to do with it is leave it alone as much as possible, and focus on making changes slowly and one thing at a time. Demolishing the whole lot and starting again will leave the country with no health service at all for at least a decade.



This is pie in the sky. Science doesn't work that way - you can't simply say "let's invent X" and throw money at it. You *can* invest money into researching more cost-effective space travel.



How would this help? Do you intend to round up large chunks of the population and fire them into space? Or do you intend to pay them to leave willingly?



I don't think it works that way. Besides, with what? All your money has gone on space rockets, rebuilding all those hospitals and Moonbase Alpha.



As with the NHS, the national curriculum has been reviewed a million times. And banning private schools is shooting yourself in the foot - whether you like it or not, it is private schools that produce some of the best and brightest. I don't really want to go into details as this post is long enough, but basically a private school can select its pupils on merit (or money), whereas public schools are forced to teach anyone no matter how stupid or disruptive.



Generally it is not schools that teach this, but families. But this is fairly moot now anyway, as you've already made the country secular and banned private schools.



Strikes from public transport unions. Expense of setting up the computers. Complaints when they go wrong (which they will, being a brand new system).



If you want to get this far in your plan, you'll need to abolish voting altogether. But in any event, you've now ensured that only the rich are able to stand for office. How exactly you get them to keep to their election pledges when you still haven't got those FTL spacecraft built is an interesting question.



Presumably by assigning each citizen a job, whether they like it or not. You can't simply magic jobs out of thin air - what are they? Who is providing them? Who is paying for them?



This is the current aim of government, and it is very hard to achieve. Not everyone is capable of getting a good education. Making university free is a noble goal - but it is entirely unsupportable unless you only allow the elite to get a university education. Everyone? Unworkable.



So you're going to need a lot of public housing. This will be expensive to sort out, unless you're planning on seizing all assets held by those lords and peers in the beginning. They might object to that. What about private homeowners?



More research issues. It's not an absence of money that is preventing this research, but an absence of knowledge. We don't know how to begin making fusion power stations.



Goodbye, infrastructure. With nothing to replace them, how do you intend to move people and goods around? Electric cars require charging, and are not feasible for larger loads. Trains and planes are limited in where they can go.

Remove tax-exempt status from each and every religious organization.

Get rid of Affirmative Action, and hire on the basis of merit only without regard to skin color, sex, age, gender, religion, politics, age, or physical disability.

Subsidize secondary education - if you graduate primary school.

Make only "civil unions" legal. You could still have a wedding ceremony, but that won't mean that you are "married".

certainly a valid long term problem with the nonsense suggested by Hexagon.

buts lets look at the short term:
[img][800:783]http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2011/12/World%20debt%20to%20GDP.jpg[/img]
you might want to re-think about nationalizing your banks...

I believe if the economy can be allowed to grow and somehow we can stabilize it for the long haul things will work out. Just hire the best financial advisors, give them an objective, and let them work out the details and chart the course. We're Americans we can do anything if we can sweep the BS out of the way first.
The actual source of financial wellbeing and contentment is private business, not the government.


The annexation of Canada and Mexico would be more of a possibility.