What would you do if you were president?

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One action, assume it's effective(note, do not interpret as assume it has no unintended consequences, assume your intended consequence comes to be), baring putting forward a law(or similar actions). That is, the question is focused on the more independent executive powers, as opposed to the ones that involve interaction(or the support of) with the other two branches.

For me it would be initiating a police action in Mexico(and other south American countries) to purge it of it's drug lords as well as all associated infrastructure. The intention would be to remove their undue influence on the Mid-America and South American governments and America, this may or may not involve the assassination of government officials if there is overlap. The CIA probably already has all the information needed for something like that, but if not I would send them information gathering before beginning. I would also be making it clear that something like this would not be impossible to repeat.

Targets would be primarily, fields and refining structures, top level management, most of middle management, and any government official who showed complicity.

The goal of this question(for me) is to see if someone can come up with a non-morally ambiguous use of executive powers, assuming non-hypothetical context(That is current context).

Consequences that immediately come to mind for me, are the economic(and destabilizing) effects on Mexico, as well as any political blow back from them(aka war), and an impeachment hearing of some sort, although I suspect I could get away with it.

WTF? Just fortify the border, cut ties with them, and let them figure out how to productively run their country on their own. Like most countries, they only like us when we are giving away lots of handouts anyway. And in Mexico's case they also expect us to let their rabble invade our country and take our jobs and our social services budget too.

One action...reappropriate military funds toward the educational system.

"Those nations which out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow."

Last edited by Bethie on 09 Apr 2011, 9:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I would legalize drugs. Morally ambiguous, sure, but it would end trafficking and at the same time bring a new economic activity to the country. Of course, ads would be restricted, the same way the government here did to cigarrette ads (strangely, they didn't ban alcoholic beverage ads; I would gladly correct that oversight).

But if you want an unambiguous measure, I would reform the educational system in my country. Brazil is ridiculously weak in education, which is a big no for such a large country. Not only I would increase the expenses in education, I would also change the subjects taught in public schools to something that would be useful for the whole life. Things like finances, logic, ethics, law, computing, portuguese (our language; fortunately it's a mandatory course), english (it's also mandatory, but very basic in public schools), history, mathematics (but not those things we never use in the real world) and so on.

Yeah, that's my definite answer. Reform the education. Afterwards, I would move to health, because brazilian healthcare is laughable.

EDIT: I took so long to type my reply that Bethie beat me to it.

You can't fortify a border well enough to prevent smuggling. Although I suppose with the conditions of this question you could. I chose drugs because of my strong dislike for them, not because of a strong concern for Mexico although I suppose I should have said as much in my original post, you'll notice I didn't include plans to help Mexico stabilize itself, I just assumed they would manage it on their own, as it stands the drugs lords dictate government operation.

I suppose fortifying the border counts as an unambiguous use if you discount the effects on what would be illegal immigrants economically, but I suppose allowing more legal immigrants in as needed would cut that off.



I was talking about the American presidential office in particular, can your president make laws? Or is the classification of marijuana as illegal not tied to legislature?

Would elimination of the standing army, while using the draft to give every capable citizen military training when they come of age count?

Yes, he can. But the law needs to be discussed and approved by the majority of the congress. Unfortunately, brazilian politics are ridiculously crooked. Corruption is a big problem here.
And the classification of illicit drugs is tied to legislature. United Nations, the american continent as a whole... Brazil has made some compromises about illicit drugs.

Ah, well the question was specifically about executive powers that do not require another branches approval.

I'd invite Magnus_Rex's Brazil to join NAFTA.

Of course, that would require congressional approval to have any real effect. Among things that a president could do unilaterally, I'd draw down the troop strength in Afghanistan to the minimum of special forces required to keep Al Qaeda from rebuilding there, and abandon our current nation building goals there.

Plant sneaky little logic jams in the great road to socialism, cleverly enough to where it would be decades before anyone figured out where and how the whole thing unraveled.

(Playing cards with current pres and Cass Sunstein at Cass's place, I pick up a vase and put it on a differen't side of the shelf "What are you doing?" "Oh - you'll see in due time.")

I'd like to think my major legacy if I were President would be energy and infrastructure reform. It may not sound all that glamorous or exciting, but I thoroughly believe that updating our infrastructure is one very fundamental step we can take to lower unemployment and improve the quality of life in the US. I'm talking about maintaining roads and bridges, encouraging improved public transit systems, building more power plants to take advantage of wind, solar, and hydroelectric energy, passing additional legislation to enforce reduced emissions from cars, and building high-speed maglev rails from coast to coast. Of course, this also requires some major restructuring within government regulatory agencies to weed out corruption and negative influence from the oil and coal industries, car companies, and airlines. No more MMS employees snorting cocaine and sleeping with oil company representatives.

The President and Congress should repudiate the national debt, go back to the gold standard and convene an Constitutional Convention post hast. It is time to reconstitute the nation.

ruveyn

I would close down every U.S. military base not on us soil (and half of those that are)
change U.S Foreign policy "to hey you wanna trade?"
halt us military aid.
abolish income tax (return to tariffs and a georgist tax for funding)
call insurance companies and say
"what kinda discount could you get me on a group plan for 307,006,550 people?"
decriminalze recreational drugs.
lift the ban on assualt rifles (they are fun)

-Flat taxes
-Abolish corporate welfare completely
-Reform social welfare big time so that the safety net isn't used as a hammock
-Legalize weed, decriminalize everything else big time
-Eliminate the gun registry and allow any type of gun to be bought (whether it's a suppressed pistol or a 10 inch barrel shotgun)
-Bring back the chain gangs
-Allow people to choose where they wanna put their taxes to (education, military, social programs, etc.)
-Reform education so that it's less rote more and more variety
etc... etc...

Not trying to screw up your flow here.. I just have, what I hope to be a quick question..

I was raised in a hunting/shooting family... At 8 years old, after target practice, I could breakdown and clean my own 9mm. (Just trying to show that I'm somewhat familiar with and comfortable with gun ownership...)

I can understand that an assault rifle might be fun to shoot.. I'd love to give it a go...

But what legal reason would anyone have for a silencer-equipped pistol? Is your argument just that the government shouldn't be able to tell you no? or is there more to it?

I'm not trying to be obtuse.... I'm just curious...

Cut "defense" spending down to merely russian levels, pouring the rest into Science and education.