Friday, February 27, 2009

Twenty More Answers to Twenty More Questions

After viewing my previous entry, I realized many of the hot-button topics of today, such as the ones I read about in the media, aren't addressed. This list will attempt to target more contemporary issues.

1. Universal health care for all?
Yes, let's join Canada, the UK and most Western European nations in offering health care to all citizens of all ages and all socioeconomic backgrounds.

2. Should high school be trimmed?
Yes, grades eleven and twelve should be eliminated, replaced with practical job experience (apprenticeship) or college.

3. Should college be free?
At public universities, certain fields of study where the nation faces a dire shortage, such as all of the sciences, including the medical sciences, should offer strong incentives to students, such as completely free tuition and fees, but other majors do not merit such powerful incentives.

4. Should we drill for oil in the Alaska Wildlife Refuge or coastlines?
If a method of extraction and transportation is discovered to be free of risk to the environment, yes, but if not, then put the idea on hold until such time as a national emergency.

5. How do we get our energy?
Nuclear fission and fusion, wind, solar, cleaner coal, and hydro, all technologies which our army of scientists, created in (3), should be studying at a furious rate at this very moment in a new variety of a Manhattan Project.

6. Public transit?
Yes, effective public mass transit (trains) should be mandatory in every city with a population greater than 1,000,000, such that owning a car should become optional rather than an absolute necessity, as it is today in most areas.

7. Should green cars be mandatory?
Green cars, trucks and SUV's based upon hybrid technology or other green technologies should be tax-free, with no sales tax or license fees at all, whereas vehicles that are inefficient in fuel consumption should be taxed at tenfold the regular rate (a sales tax between 70 - 100%) to reflect their higher impact on the environment, however this increased rate should be a one-time event impacting sales of new vehicles only and exempting all used vehicles.

8. Legal abortion?
Yes, a woman has the final say on the human being developing within her womb, and until it emerges from the host body, it should be considered a part of the host body from the purely legal perspective.

9. Legal euthanasia (assisted suicide)?
Yes, a person should have the right to end their life for reasons having to do with incurable disease or infirmity using humane and painless methods, assisted by a medical doctor.

10. Alimony?
Women have the opportunity to work in a way that they didn't in times past, and the law needs to reflect this reality, because alimony that consists of half of a man's wages and/or assets is often unfair to the man and unrealistic for him to provide.

11. Immigration?
Punitive measures against immigrants should be replaced by punitive measures against the business owners that eagerly hire them, because on the one hand you have poor, hard-working people that are often exploited, and on the other you have rich, corrupt individuals glad to short-change their employees.

12. The death penalty?
Capital punishment should be abolished in order to keep up with the rest of the world, where it is rarely used except in the most barbaric states, because otherwise we sully our image abroad.

13. Treatment of prisoners?
Prisoners should not be punished for the sake of pure sadism, but should be exposed to free psychological treatment, education and substance abuse counseling, and there should be a strong focus throughout the system upon eliminating violent behavior and thought patterns that lead toward violence.

14. Let prisoners work?
Those prisoners that want to work should be allowed to do so and be paid at the current minimum wage, with half of their earnings taken to compensate their victims or else the State, and a sizable portion used to purchase treasury bonds, which will be saved for their eventual release to give them a nest egg for starting over in the civilian world.

15. Privatization?
Private industry should not intrude into public areas like the prisons, military, medicine, or the highway system, because it opens up pathways for corruption, inefficiency and opaqueness.

16. Gay marriage?
Gays should have the right to marry and receive all benefits pertaining thereto.

17. War?
Those who favor attacking other countries should themselves pay for the costs of the war in full, instead of spreading the financial burden to afflict the majority who prefer peace.

18. Welfare?
Welfare benefits should be reduced, and since most welfare benefits the very rich, the welfare that goes toward businesses and corporations is the only type of welfare that needs to be cut.

19. How to reduce the prison population?
Drug abuse is a medical problem rather than a criminal one, and by legalizing most drugs, the majority of the prison population can be freed and future cases of prosecution reduced by over one half.

20. Space exploration?
Although space exploration is expensive, it represents a better potential return than warfare and engages the public imagination, and therefore we should continue to explore space to answer eternal questions about ourselves, life, the universe, and creation.

Extra bonus question:
21. Should President Obama continue our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq?
No, he should withdraw from both of these pointless, never-ending overseas conflicts, which closely resemble Viet Nam, within one year, and he should pledge that the United States will never again commit such a grievous, arrogant blunder as represented by those two ethical and financial disasters.

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