Political Basics

I've been a bit of a political watcher since junior high, but really got into politices after getting married in 1995. I haven't been the best about voting over the years, but have gotten better as the years have gone by. I tend to vote mostly in the presidential and congressional elections. The reason politics has always interested me is due to history and ideas. There are some great stories about America's history and what it took to get this country started. Out of that process came great debates on how this country should be founded and the rules by which we should live. Many of the debates were about the freedoms we should have and why we should have them.

The basics for me are smaller government and fewer taxes. The less role government plays in my life, the more freedom I have. The less I have to pay out for this government, the more money I have to spend making my own decisions. I'm on the side of conservatives and sometimes libertarians. If things went my way, we'd only pay 5% in taxes and they'd be collected as a sales tax. Lawmakers would only spend about 4-6 months in Washington and have to work real jobs the remainder of the year. The less they do, the better.

Government is made up of 3 branches. It seems over time that the Judicial Branch has been doing the job of the Legislative Branch and that has gotten out of hand. It is not the Supreme Court's job to make law. If there isn't a law concerning the case, they should turn the lawmaking over to the Legislative Branch. That's the process. It seems though that we have had activist judges try to read things into current laws that aren't really there. If the law needs to be spelled out better, that is a job for the Congress.

There are only a few jobs that our Federal government should be involved in. The first is protection of our borders. This involves the recent immigration issues and protecting our country from terrorists and countries that wish us harm. This also involves certain parts of our economics which leads to another of the jobs they have. This job is to assist the states in trade, foreign and domestic. This also involves mediating when the states need it. I can also see where the Feds need to be involved with transportation, such as our connecting highways and our airspace. There isn't much else for them to be involved in. The rest pretty much should be up to the states. We really need to get the Feds out of many of the things they are involved in. They have been involved in education since 1974 and it's only gotten worse. They have been involved in social programs since Roosevelt and it has only gotten worse. We keep throwing more and more money at the problems in this country instead of letting the states take care of their people in a more direct process that will cost less and be what the people of that state want.

The country was started with no income tax. This was a temporary solution during wartime, but the Congress decided to maintain it and then increase it tremendously over the years. Some people are paying out more than 50% of their income in taxes. Taxes take the form of income tax, sales tax, and all sorts of licenses. Much of our income is taxed multiple times. Even if we take the money we have after taxes and invest it and make more money, they not only tax the profits, but then tax what you invested again. If you die and pass what you have after taxes on to your family, they are then taxed on what you passed on. It gets tedious and rediculous and this is why so many people get confused with the current tax system and say bad things about the IRS. There needs to be major change and major reduction in tax code and taxes.

These are very basic things and it's what the majority of the people in the US want, but it involves such major change that lawmakers are afraid to do it. Sudden changes would cause some pretty drastic problems right away. Of course, with careful planning and slowing things down with just a few changes at a time, great things could be accomplished. Necessary things need to be done, but it takes some great leadership. It may even involve voting for "regular people with regular jobs" instead of attorneys who just want to get their name on a piece of history by creating more laws. It involves consistently voting for people who want the same things and are willing to accomplish them. The more we vote this way, the more emboldened they will be as others who share their ideas enter Congress. If we get fooled, we vote someone else in who has these ideas. At times, that will also involve voting for someone in our two party system that will at least lean most of the way you want them to.

I'm a firm believer that we know what is best for us. As adults we get to make our own decisions, good and bad. We should decide how most of our money is spent. We should decide how our children are educated. We should decide how our businesses should be run. We should decide the moral decisions in our own communities. What is good for someone in California may not be good for someone in Missouri and vice versa. It is imperitive that we make these decisions for ourselves instead of allowing others to do it for us. Get involved. Educate yourself. Vote.