Proposed Contract With America II

Dear Mr. Hintz

Thank you very much for your correspondence of earlier this year, and the State Blue Book. I really appreciate that!

I’m enclosing a suggested Contract With America II, which is based on the successful effort of 1994 when the Republicans captured Congress. I’m sending it to folks whom I think can influence general election debate. I am happy with your efforts, and plan to vote for you this fall.

As a voter, I deem that both sides, while responding to our Electorate’s very fervent wish for change, both sides have very few new ideas. We, the Electorate, are very thirsty for new ideas. Old ideas won’t solve our present problems, not any longer.

I have written this as a citizen’s effort to help the quality of electoral debate in this country. I have put in the new ideas that I think COULD be enacted at either a State or Federal level. And the Democrats have embraced some classically Republican ideas, like balanced budgets! As a taxpayer, and as a voter, I want to see the utterly best public debate from both sides. We’ve got to have govt perform at higher levels than we’ve ever had it do before. New ideas are needed for these higher performance levels.

As I’ve shared before, I’m an Independent voter with no ambitions for public office of any kind. I’m an ideas person, with a passion for “how do folks get things done?” I study, and basically, I view myself as an articulate philosopher.

Probably I’ll vote for Mr. Obama in the fall. He too supports change, but I haven’t heard much in specifics from him. I have to wonder if he’s got new specific ideas? I am offering some here.

My work is based on a problem solving system that right now I call Competition Management. I’ve found it to be an idea machine. As just one example, consider the Chinese war philosopher Sun Tzu. He wrote The Art of War, and died about 450 BC. His Strategy is a sequential “to do” list, that gets you from Point A to Point B.

If you change that “to do” list, you innovate. What business has considered an “art”, I’ve just functionally described as a “science”.

To determine your strategy (which BTW is Maslow’s highest of the Hierarchy of Needs, Self Actualization, unimpeded progress toward your goal) you (1) determine where you want to go, (2) identify routes you can take to get there, (3) pick the best route, and then (4) carry out your program to your goal. If I’m not mistaken, I’ve also just defined, behaviorally, the 4 step Scientific Problem Solving Method.

I have submitted this work also to Tom Petri, and I’m hoping that somehow I can reach Bob Barr, the former Georgia Congressman who’s now running for President on the Libertarian ticket. I, like he, am a Civil Libertarian. And, as further pondering, just consider this. Right now the Bush Administration has proudly taken us into the Homeland Security mode. Well, some 70 years ago, they called it The Maginot Mentality in France! You know where it got the French! And that Maginot Mentality meant our brave troops had to do the dangerous Normandy landings, to fix French foul-ups! Or take the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Their highest priority was Homeland Security. We need to remember we beat all of them with dynamism. Homeland Security animals (e.g. turtles, exoskeleton insects, lobsters, crabs, others) don’t rule the Animal Kingdom, because they don’t take risks. Life is a trapeze act, and we manage risks by high and increasing skills levels, through constant practice.

I’m hopeful you like it. If you like it and use substantial portions of it, ID’ing your source, me, would be a welcome action.

Thanks in advance for your interest and followup to this.

Bill Ramsay



CONTRACT WITH AMERICA II

This document is a 2nd Contract With America to help correct America’s drift and to restore balance between Americans and their government.

If elected to Congress, we the undersigned pledge to:

I Line Item Veto – Pass a Constitutional Amendment for the Line Item Veto, and follow the ratification effort through the State Legislatures until it is passed. Its aim is to authorize The President to veto selected items in bills passed by The Congress, especially so called Earmarks. Earmarks are, essentially, legalized corruption.

Other Actions: Establish a Senate and House committee – to monitor Line Item Veto Constitutional Amendments.

II Establish Presidential Election by popular vote, either by proportional splits (would Federal Law suffice here?) or by Constitutional Amendment abolishing The Electoral College. This brings the “one voter, one vote” principle to the Highest Office in The Land. Some votes “don’t count” under the current Electoral College system.

Same committee guides Electoral College efforts through (if needed) State legislatures (esp. if the Constitutional Amendment route is chosen).

III A Performance Review of the War On Terror is done by a 9/11 style commission established right after the new Congress takes office. This report would be due 6 months after the new Congress takes office. Our entire War On Terror from 9/11 is to be reviewed, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and elsewhere. Our current Administration has refused such a review, but ordinary working Americans must undergo Annual Performance Reviews, and our Government is no better. In the past, Performance Reviews by Congress were done right after the Pearl Harbor disaster.

Other actions: Bi-partisan War On Terror report and recommendations is due out 6 months after swearing in the new Congress.

IV US Strategic Direction to Year 2050 is reviewed and recommendations are made, similar to III above. All relevant issues will be examined, including the Great Power rise of China and India, global warming, our (and the world’s) food supply, our energy dependency, and US financial solvency. This Commission will present its report 8 months from the new Congress taking office, and will contain recommendations of the other Commissions.

Bi-partisan US strategic Direction – due out 9 months after new Congress is sworn in, timing allows the incorporation of other commissions’ findings.

V A Performance Review will be done on the US Energy Addiction, esp. to foreign oil. Many folks and institutions have failed us, the American People. What failed? Who failed us? Why were we “failed”? Mistakes need to be defined, and names need to be named. Also, recommendations need to be made for actions to be done by governments, industry, and citizens. Global Warming also needs to be considered.

Energy commission – due out 6 months after new Congress is sworn in - again, timng allows for #’s 3 & 5 also to incorporate into # 4.

VI Enact an Open Government Statute. All conversations / meetings with lobbyists must be recorded / documented and left on the Internet – to include conversational content. Lobbyists get their access to lawmakers, but no more hidden deals are permitted. This Open Records law would be similar to Wisconsin’s Open Records laws.

Attempts eo end legalized corruption, esp. earmarks & other undue influence – based on Wisconsin Open Meeting Laws.

VII Enact the Incarcerated Person’s Contributers’ Act, within 100 days of the new Congress. By Law, insist that Incarcerated Persons have 2 obligations: (1) those with the ability to pay, will pay the costs of their incarcerations. (2) all, including those who have the ability to pay the costs of their incarcerations, have a legal obligation to contribute to society by personal gainful efforts. By use of hefty Federal subsidies, we the undersigned also promise to bring the States to comply like the Feds did with the age 21 national drinking age.

8th Amendment issues (Cruel and Unusual punishments) and labor competition w/civilian labor needs to be addressed, as part of defining the bill.

VIII Enact a law within 100 days of taking office – fal earmarks must be approvd by a 3/5 majority vote – helps “document” earmarks for the Public – and it’s still legalized corruption.

60% vote earmarks also must explain the role of how we Americans are being bribed – “bought” – with our own tax money in return for our vote!!!! This diversion of scarce investment resources is the functional equivalent of osteoporosis in aging people.

For far too much of the time, earmarks are merely “incumbents’ job security”. Our vote is being “bought”!

IX Within 100 days pass the Financial Literacy Encouragement Act – establishes a body – or assigns the job to an existing body, perhaps the GAO – to publish by handy booklets (.pdf booklets on the Internet) which can be gought for the cost of printing – to explain financial basics to our General Public. These would explain the 5 C’s of Credit a applies to the ordinary taxpayer (all of us are creditors through Social Security / Medicare etc promises), expains investment basics (nothing happens economically until 2 things happen, one somebody invests in something, and then second somebody as a steward for that money, accomplishes something, like makes a shipment, makes a sale, give a paid prescription, etc).

Law provides that within 4 months of the bill’s passage, pamphlets are defined and out, also uses the financial planners, accounting groups, etc, material for the public to “self educate”.

Our society has done a miserable job of financial basics education to the General Public – and our high schools and colleges are not up to the task!!! Thus, the general public pamphlets, at nominal cost.

X Create another bi-partisan 9/11 style commission! This one studies background facts on both Social Security AND the Medical Industry (includes pharmaceuticals and old age care) an within 6 months reports on Social Security’s viability and the closely related medical long term care fields. This reports includes where Social Security money COULD go for investments. It also would do a cost analysis of medical / pharmaceutical / long term care industries, those findings to be made public. The commission would als make recommendations for cutting medical expenses, benchmarking world-wide best practices, how to make Social Security viable for generations to come.

These reforms would mandate that insurance (catastrophic, at least through Govt high risk, if necessary) and tha bankruptcy law / high pressure collection / mandatory cash pre-pays would not be allowed.

In effect, if a person was a “good citizen” in seeking insurance, etc, they could not be pressed for bankruptcy tue to medical / drug / medical insurance bills.

Basically, this effort would analyze the US health care system compared with foreign systems, and would measure costs by type of medical labor – measure costs of litigation (malpractice, esp) effectiveness of each medical procedure, costs of government regulations, costs / benefits of name brankds vs. generics, and legal strategies used by pharmaceuticals to extend (by legal actions) the life of their patents beyond the legally stipulated periods (basically, legal technicalities are used to extend the life of that monopoly, etc). This commission als would establish the wole of wholesale vs retail costs for costly medical / pharmaceutical procedures and products.

Again esp like # 7, it is vehemently a “public good” that our workers be kept in an “economic fighter” status, employed and fiercely making incredibly effective use of every dollar that’s earned.

The utter worst happening is “walk aways”. It’s happening in the housing crisis – people are simply giving up and not trying anymore. It’s also happening in the medical field, where people are uninsured mostly because they can’t get insurance.

XI Within 100 days, define a bill and bring it for a Floor votes, a flat tax in both the House aqnd the Senate. The current Tax Code would be scrapped. As it stands now, The Tax Code is mostly not understood, even by Tax Professionals, neither on the compliance side (the taxpayers and tax preparers) nor on the enforcement side (IRS, state taxing authorities).

In addition to the Tax Code’s unintelligibility, compliance / enforcement is unacceptably costly. Every effort to “reform” the Tax Code simply makes the confusion worse.

And all the recourse devoted to the current Tax Code do not make our economic pie bigger. They merely “move around” (at great expense) the already existing (and diminishing) economic wealth.