Issues 101
The Ignored Issues
Hillary Clinton - John McCain - Barack Obama - Ron Paul - Ignored Issues

There are a number of issues - and sub-issues - that, in my opinion, should be receiving more attention. Here are a few - and I'll add to the empty ones as soon as possible, for whoever might care.

CAMPAIGN REFORM

527 GROUPS & PACs

Campaign reform means absolutely nothing so long as these groups are allowed to exist without regulations and without accountability, spreading "soft money" around like it was butter, hiding behind phony names to keep us from learning who set them up and controls them.

Perhaps if we passed laws that made those individuals who create a PAC or 527 Group legally liable for any and all illegal activities committed by those organizations (with very stiff prison sentences and a "three-strikes-you're-out" provision prohibiting them from ever participating in politics again), maybe we'd see a little more decency and responsibility by these groups.

You know what? Maybe we should also make candidates/politicians responsible also, for every act committed by the PACs and contributors they hit up for millions. Hey, I can dream, can't I?

But let's at least have an independent oversight group made up non-office holders from each party, with equal representation from independent parties as well. And if there's any hanky-panky going on within the group, then every member will be held equally responsible and they would all go to jail - no time off for good behavior or class or wealth or connections. Call it sentencing guidelines. Plus, if it's legal to impose harsher sentences for crack cocaine than powdered cocaine, let's make harsher sentences for politicians who commit crimes than for the average citizen worth less than, let's say, $100.000.

CIVIL LIBERTIES

WIRETAPPING

If the terrorists are supposed to be Muslims, why are hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans being spied upon? Have we found the enemy, only to discover it is us? In Vietnam, we killed people "to save them" from communism - that fate worse than death. Now, within our own borders, we are killing liberty "to save it." We do it by tearing up the Constitution and Bill of Rights, arriving like the Gestapo in the middle of the night to drag people from their homes and disappear with them into the darkness, never to be seen again.

Since when do we become superior to "the enemy" by stooping to become as low as that enemy? Wasn't it Benjamin Franklin who once said, "Those who would give up their liberties in the name of security deserve neither'?

FISA

We set up this court, as secret as it is, but then if it makes a ruling our Great Leader doesn't like, he simply ignores it. And, of course, if you are a member of that kangaroo court, you'd better never rule against the Great Leader - or you might yourself sitting in Gitmo.

MICROCHIP IMPLANTS

Let's first require that all politicians and executives of companies who make microchips be required to wear them, surgically, that is, with their whereabouts constantly tracked and posted on the Internet for all the world to see, kind like those monitoring/tracking bracelets "ordinary" criminals have to wear.

And let's invite anyone and everyone to try and hack these chips. If they do, then the information they retrieve - financial, employment history, medical records, etc. - would also be posted on the Internet ... and the losers get evicted from Big Brother.

WAR ON TERRORISM HOAX

A "war on terrorism" that isn't backed up with funding, training and sound intelligence is not a war - it's a joke. We need to come to a consensus as to what "terrorism" really means. Are you a terrorist if you're a Muslim? Black? Irish? Protestant? Buddhist? Homosexual? Thespian? Your feet stink? Have a funny name like Barack or Hussein or Obama? Get caught reading Harry Potter on an airliner? Don't raise the toilet seat when you pee? Let's have a national referendum, put it on the ballot.

TORTURE

When is torture not torture? Whenever the Great Leader says so! It all depends on what the meaning of "is" is, according to one of our recent Great Leaders. "I is not having sex with that woman! Because "is" means now - and I rolled off of her an hour ago. Now maybe I was having sex with that woman, but I isn't now."

Maybe Administration officials who break the law by refusing to testify before Congress when subpoenaed to do so should be water-boarded until they show up and testify - truthfully.

CORPORATE REFORM

BAN THE CORPORATE ENTITY?

I recently read about one U.S. town that passed a law banning corporate entities - because a corporate entity has all the powers of a human being - and virtually none of the responsibility. (See Legal Reform below). I can create a corporation, rip off thousands of people, cry a few crocodile tears, pay a teeny-weeny fine - then go out and do it all over again.

Maybe corporations should be required to pledge allegiance to the nation in which they are incorporated. After all, immigrants have to when they become citizens. The creation of the corporation has morphed into one of the greatest evils in this country. Sometimes I wonder if that wasn't the purpose all along.

Maybe if the fines were set at 4-5 times the amount of the ripoff - PLUS repaying the rip-off from PERSONAL funds if need be, without recourse to bankruptcy - then maybe we'd see less corporate crime.

CRIME CONTROL

RESPONSIBLE GUN CONTROL

We are all horrified and saddened when we see the madness that is Columbine or West Virginia Tech or the scores of other mass, senseless killings of innocent people. But we have to realize the fault is not within a lifeless, inanimate piece of steel - but within ourselves. When our children are so brutalized by the "in" crowds at their schools - taunted, tormented, beaten, humiliated ... they will explode, just as would. This crisis is spiritual, not mechanical.

We do need to bring the problem under control, even if we can't eliminate it entirely. For one, we need to understand that in difficult economic times, when people are desperate to put food on the table and a roof over their children at night - crime will go up. We have to attack the disease, not the symptoms.

Even Barack Obama, that much-aligned liberal of late, stands up for "the individual right to bear arms." The Second Amendment wasn't written so we could go turkey hunting. It was written so we could protect ourselves from a corrupt and dictatorial government ... and I fear we are going to badly need that ability in the days ahead.

ECONOMY

The Bush administration and the Federal Reserve are pursuing a dangerous, reckless course that only continues to enrich the wealthy and the global mega-corporations - at the expense of the rest of us who aren't so wealthy. Forget Bush's "slowdown." The world's new richest man says we're already in a recession.

Forget recession. We're approaching another Great Depression, and it's bearing down on us fast! Our government is simply throwing more gasoline on the flames. The headlines of today, for example "Emergency moves try to stabilize markets" (The Tennessean, Mar. 17, 2008), sound eerily similar to those during the beginning of the 1929 stock market collapse and bank crash.

HOUSING/CREDIT MELTDOWN

For example, the Fed just poured another $200 billion into the money market for the benefit of the banks and sub-prime lenders - BUT this benefits only them, not the millions of people losing their homes. The lenders have reacted by raising mortgage rates even higher -  for 5 consecutive months now!

Bear Stearns, which was just bought by JPMorgan for one penny on the dollar, lost $16 billion in value in a matter of hours ... and it's said to be just the beginning. These are "investment banks" - not like our normal banks that are FDIC-insured. These are not insured, placing the country in the same position it was before the Great Depression - because if these fail, as they are now doing, they will take the normal banks down with them. The FDIC, like Social Security and Mediare, doesn't have enough money to do its job.

As the Fed races to print more money (it costs them 10-15 cents each (maximum) to print any denomination bill, but costs the taxpayer the full face values of that bill, whether it's $1 or $1,000), the value of the dollar drops just as fast. It seems the Fed is hoping that the downturn is temporary and that the dollar will rebound when (if?) the crisis passes. In the meantime, the middle-class and lower-class income earners pay the costs with higher prices for food, fuel, higher local taxes and utility bills.

Appraisers are being bribed, blackmailed and extorted to inflate home prices (CBS News, Mar. 14, 2008). The banks get more interest, homeowners get screwed. People are just giving up - now in the millions - and walking away from their homes, trying to find cheap apartments ... or becoming homeless.

Years ago, on my television show, The Omega Report, I predicted exactly this scenario - and was called "a right-wing nut." Now I get phone calls from viewers saying, "Damn! You were right!"

"Tougher mortgage regulation pushed - Bush advisory group wants to avoid another credit meltdown" by Jeannine Aversa, Associated Press, Mar. 14, 2008

This is a bit too little, too late - even if the moribund Bush administration would approve it, which they probably don't - in the name of "capitalism" and "free trade."

BANK FAILURES

The Fed has estimated that 100 or more banks face failure, including CitiBank, along with financial corporations (investment banks) like Bear Stearns and even the notorious Carlyle Group. The banks have been loaning money they didn't have - because their collateral was worthless ... junk bonds, derivatives, subprime mortgages.

Bear Stearns stock fell 40% in one day, Mar. 14, despite a Fed bailout unprecedented since the Great Depression. It still looks like Bear Stearns will fail, creating a domino effect that will bring the whole system crashing down, just like in 1929.

OUT-OF-CONTROL TAXES

The Democrat-controlled Congress has just, in effect, increased taxes by $683 billion (March 13, 2008). How are we, the taxpayers, supposed to pay this? We're already facing double-digit increases in water rates, electric rates, and local taxes!

WORTHLESS DOLLAR

Gold is up to $1,000 an ounce because the dollar is all-but-worthless. Those who advocate a continued, even larger, war in the Middle East (Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, etc.) should be reminded that every dollar spent over there is one more dollar taken away from us and given to the multi-national corporations that are growing grossly obese at the public trough.

Ronald Reagan set out to destroy the "Evil Empire" of the Soviet Union by bankrupting it; it now seems that al Qaeda and its ilk is successfully doing the same thing to the United States.

INFLATION-STAGFLATION

This is caused by the ongoing insanity of the Fed, desperate for any band-aid fix. Consumers pare paying the price for an inflation over which they have no control. Prices are rising largely because of our trade deficit, our War on Islam, the money printing presses running until they break down, as well as our butt-kissing of the multi-national corporations, the oil companies, pharmaceutical companies, big agriculture and the financial industry. These financial powerhouses are pigs without a damned bit of concern for the American people or its government. They pledge their allegiance to the God of $$$$$.

Wages are stagnant - even dropping. For most of us, the only jobs available are minimum wage jobs slinging hamburgers at McDonalds or its clones.

FUEL/FOOD PRICES

Last week the news was predicting $4-a-gallon gas. A week later the news prediction is $5 a gallon. Well, it's already hit $5.19 a gallon in California. Six months ago, no one believed we'd see $100-a-barrel oil; now we're being told to expect $200 a barrel before 2008 ends.

Food prices are rapidly following suit, fueled by higher gas prices. Trucking companies are about to collapse. What will that do to food prices? What will do to the food supply itself?

FOREIGN POLICY REFORM

DIPLOMACY TRUMPS WAR

Is "shoot first and ask questions later" really the way we want to lead our lives? Once upon a time there was a great nation across the Great Water, a nation where all were welcomed, where all could live in peace. That nation even had a statue in the harbor that said "Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses." Now that nation is probably the most hated on the face of the planet. How have we come to this?

Are we so arrogant as to believe that we are the epitome of perfection, of God himself? (If you want to think, that is, that God is a bearded, white-haired old man with a beard and testicles). Can we even accept the possibility that maybe we have screwed over the rest of the world, abusing and misusing our power, for a century or more? Now, I know you don't do this personally and I don't either, but isn't it just a wee bit possible that those butt-holes we've elected in the past did do those things - in our name?

Start by making a list of all the countries we've invaded, the governments we've overthrown - even when democratically elected. Then make a list of those nations we've used for guinea pigs for drug experiments, mind control experiments, dumping bad food and drugs on - all the things you would not want done to yourself or your children.

If you're an evangelical Christian, ask yourself WWJD. If not, then ask what you would want others to do to you.

We can be paranoid and fearful, hiding behind the curtains of our borders, afraid every time there's a knock on the door, suspicious of everyone who walks down the street or casts a glance at our pathetic house. Or we can take a good look in the mirror and change our own ways. If we want to change the world, we must change ourselves. When the world is wrong, we must right ourselves.

If we are really proud of our nation, of who we claim to be, then we must hold our head up high and make sure we live up to the ideals we profess - for others as well as ourselves. If we've screwed up, we need to be man enough to admit it (no offense to the gentler sex) and make it right. If we don't, we'll die of the cancer within just as rapidly as we will die from the cancer beyond the border.

I suspect there are many things we should perhaps apologize for, to a lot of people, both alive and dead. We believe we are the world's most powerful nation - but power is effective only if you use it sparingly. We think we stand so much taller than the rest of the world, but a wise man once said, "A man never stands so tall as when he stoops to speak to a child eye to eye." Or something like that.

Yeah, when I think about it, I think we really do need to sit down with a lot of leaders around the world, in a neutral setting might be best, and have a good one-on-one heart-to-heart without the arrogance, demands and manipulation. To put conditions on talking - well, I'm not going to even talk about it unless you apologize, give me all your oil, burn your guns and think like I do - well, doesn't that sound like a couple of small children acting out?

Who was it who said, "Walk softly and carry a big stick"?

GLOBAL GOVERNMENT

'NEW WORLD ORDER'

I would really love to live in a world where we each had respect for each other, where we could all be the Good Samaritan, stopping to help the wounded beggar in the ditch. I think all of us long for a world at peace. That is my ideal, not of a New World Order, but of One World - a world without religious or racial hatred or suspicion, a world without child molesters, serial killers, serial rapists, crooked politicians, greed, wife-beating. The very phrase New World Order should clearly tell us that what some people - those with the money, the power, the greed, the inhumanity - really want is ORDER ... their order, their rules, their dynasty - with us as the surfs and peasants, slaves even.

DO you really want a world where you no longer have a country or even a family? Where you are forced to bow down to a "god" just because you're ordered to, on pain of death? Where you must kill a second child because of a One Family One Child global law? Do you really want to be unable to protect you, your children or your wife from the global stormtroopers sent in to enforce the ORDER imposed from above?

If we are to ever live together as One World, it will have to come from the bottom up, not the top down.

GLOBAL TRADE

NAFTA

It seems that instead of raising the standard of living for the human race to higher level for all, the Powers That Be want to drag us all down to the lowest common denominator - in wages, health care, police state control, freedom to vote, to travel, to talk, to worship, even to think. NAFTA, of course, is a strictly economic policy that has helped a few areas, like the Texas border to Mexico, but devastated others like Ohio.

NORTH AMERICAN UNION

If it's such a good thing, why does it have to be done in secret? It might be paranoid - or it might not be - to speculate that the current economic collapse of America might be engineered, to force us into an economic-political union with other countries (also run by despots). After all, if the dollar collapses much further, the Mexican peso might start looking pretty good. The Canadian dollar is already healthier than our own.

GOVERNMENT REFORM

EARMARKS

I can understand Congress wanting to hold on to its "power over the purse", but they have caved in to the White House on every other demand, lighting a match to the so-called separation of powers. If Congress wants that power over the purse, they'd damned well better start using it wisely, responsibly.

If they want to hold on to it, they should pass legislation that sets limits on it - a limit to the number of corporations, a ban on earmarks for donors or corporations/organizations that employ relatives of the legislators, and perhaps an annual limit based on population.

They need to immediately enact legislation that requires more public accountability of the earmarks they do pass. Earmark requests should be published in advance of the requests, not pushed through in midnight sessions of an empty Congress.

Where were Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in years past when earmark reform could have been introduced? I'm not endorsing John McCain (he has lots of lies skeletons in his closet as well) but he has been the only one of the three major candidates who has refused to play the earmarks game.

A warning to Democrats - If you continue to insult the intelligence of the American people and rob them at will, you will lose not only the White House, but Congress as well ... and I for one would prefer never to see one party in control of all three branches of government.

HEALTH CARE REFORM

COLLECTIVE BARGAINING FOR DRUG PRICES

If Americans could afford health care, we wouldn't be discussing a socialized national health care plan.

If the giant pharmaceutical companies weren't ripping us off - selling us the very same, identical drugs available in Canada, for example, but at five times the price - with thousands of percent profit in many cases - we could perhaps afford medical care.

If our Congress and President would authorize Medicare to bargain for decent, nationwide drug prices, then we could afford what drugs we do need.

And if we stopped letting the pharmaceuticals brainwash us, through bribes and extortion of government officials who are supposed to oversee health, into devouring hands full of drugs we not only do not need, but which actually do more harm than good - well, we'd be spending a lot less on drugs, wouldn't we?

If we weren't so arrogant, perhaps we'd have a little more respect for the ways of the ancients and their natural remedies - and we wouldn't be faced with antibiotic-resistant killer diseases, the likes of which our ancients rarely, if ever, saw. Instead, we let a global government institute a draconian law, the Codex Alimentarius, that bans all non-pharmaceutical remedies in 2009.

If our medical system was based on care, not greed - if it would reorganize itself so each metropolitan area had very similar medical technologies and even rural areas of our nation had improved basic health care, we could provide a more balanced, accessible health care approach for all. Instead, are hospitals are in a big money war, each trying to outdo the other whether the community needs 197 specialized heart care facilities or not.

Also, if we committed to a policy of home-based health care instead of nursing homes and hospices designed to be warehouses and garbage dumps for sick and elderly, we could greatly cut health care costs.

IMMIGRATION

NOT ALL BLACK OR WHITE

OK, the Statue of Liberty really isn't an American treasure. It was a gift from France, after all, you know - those good folks who seldom bathe or change their underwear and have stinky feet. Ah, but the gift they gave us! "Send me your poor, your tried, your huddled masses."

You know, if we really wanted to purify the country (didn't Hitler have that approach?), we'd give all non-Native Americans and non-Hispanics six months to leave the country we stole from them.

But if we really wanted to start solving the real problem, we'd (a) secure our borders - as if that's even possible, (b) send any non-citizen back to their home country if they are convicted of a felony by a jury of their peers, (c) prevent illegal aliens working here from sending the bulk of their earnings out of this country, (d) provide living wages and job-training opportunities to all residents - legal and illegal (the cost could be deducted from their checks like student loans or Mediare), and (d) treat them as human beings, not as animals.

LEGAL REFORM

JUSTICE - NOT LAW!

We have too many laws and too little justice! Politicians get away with everything, including murder, while a "common" man can be sentenced to life imprisonment for stealing a 50-cent pack of donuts. It seems that our legal system is little more than an evil form of tax: if we make everyone a criminal, except us of course, then we can, in effect, tax everybody a new, hidden tax.

Why should someone accused of a crime have to pay court costs if they're found innocent?

STIFFER FINES & PRISON TIME FOR CORPORATE CRIMES

When a corporation can rip its shareholders or the public off for $500 million and pay a $2 million fine, where is the incentive to straighten up and fly right? That fine is just "overhead" - a cost of doing business ... and at less than 1/2% interest! Why should anyone pay the going interest rates when you can just steal it and pay 0.5% interest or less?

Why it is CEO's like Donald Trump - and he's certainly not the only one - can make hundreds of millions of dollars a year, make more in an hour than most of us make in a decade - even when the corporation is collapsing? Even if you are a stockholder, do you really think you have any say-so in how the business is run?

PRIVATE CORPORATIONS SHOULD NOT BE RUNNING OUR PRISONS

As the hearings on Gus Puryear IV show (the Corrections Corporation of America manger nominated to a federal judgeship) should show, it's downright stupid to put corporations in charge of prisons. Their only concern is profits - not whether guards are trained well enough to protect their own lives and safety or to deal with prisoners in a humane way. CCA has covered up escapes, accidents, beatings, even deaths - just to cook its corporate books. There is no accountability.

NEWS MEDIA REFORM

GIANT COMPANIES IN CONTROL OF THE MEDIA

It's as important to America to break up the four or so media giants, like Gannett, who stop at nothing to destroy a free and responsible press, as it was to break up the Rockefeller oil monopoly or the AT&T monopoly - which is now a monopoly again. A controlled press is dangerous, a threat to national security, because it is the only "profession" that is supposed to stand between the citizen and his/her government, acting as a watchdog - not as a whore to politicians and the very special interests that own the media.

THE INTERNET

RACE RELATIONS

DO WE REALLY WANT A RACE WAR?

In the 2008 election we see Barack Obama winning 91% of the black vote, and Hillary Clinton fighting and scratching for the blue collar, lower-income, lower-educated vote - even at the cost of re-dividing America after we've come so close to healing the wounds. It seems to be a war of Black Pride vs. White Fear. I don't blame Black Americans for rallying around the most charismatic black leader since Martin Luther King, Jr. But there's a part of me that says, "I don't like it."

John McCain, I guess, represents the Old White Guys (OWGs), the old way - he with the biggest gun is the one in the right.

All of this is just tearing us apart - and if we don't learn to get along with each other, we'll never get along with the rest of the world. What are we doing - just repeating history? Hope - Despair. Progress - Relapse. Over and over, the same old cycle.

SOCIAL SECURITY/MEDICARE REFORM

WHERE'D THE MONEY GO? MAKE 'EM GIVE IT BACK!

Since all the money put into Social Security was robbed from the Social Security fund to pay for Congress' pet projects and earmarks, I would (a) take the same money back from the programs or projects that stole it, (b) garnish every Congressman's pay to cover the cost of those earmarks and pet projects not recovered, and (c) reduce the role of federal government to the level it could meet its budget just like real American families must do.