[Bit]

Oh, this is FUN! Thanks, Dusa!
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Step One, because I agree completely with Ami: FIND THE DIRT. I would hire the best detective agency in the country to find the dirt on EVERY member of Congress AND every media personality who obstructed me. Then I would make my position very quietly clear to everyone who acted against the best interests of the lower and middle class citizens of the US: cooperate, or get slammed with a career-ending truth publicity campaign.

Step Two: Follow through. I figure I'd probably have to get rid of three or four of them before the rest would start cooperating.

Step Two A: Follow through. Get my publicity agency going fulltime to keep me in the public eye and more than that, to keep my image favorable; and to handle all the public education campaigns which will be necessary to make the changes as smooth as possible.

Step Three: Restore Habeas Corpus. NO MORE government holding tanks! Everyone has the right to know the charges against them and to be represented by an attorney; no more being held without charges!

Have I been assassinated yet? No? Yay!

Step Four: Legalize marijuana, and commute all sentences currently being served for marijuana possession, sale, or use. This would do two things, 1) empty the prisons considerably and 2) allow hemp fiber farming.

Step Five: End all tobacco, cotton, and timber subsidies.

Step Six: Institute a fiber hemp subsidy, including one-time grants to factories to re-tool from cotton and wood to hemp, and tobacco to marijuana.

The goal of steps four through six is to redirect the US agricultural economy to a sustainable product which requires neither pesticides nor clear-cutting.

Have I been assasinated yet? No? Yay!

Step Seven: Institute a tax on marijuana cigarettes, equivalent to tobacco cigarette taxes. Institute equivalent taxes on alcoholic beverages. Designate these three taxes to go directly to the Medicare budget... cuz Medicare's suuurrrre gonna need it when the first big party-drug generation hits the system. (Boomers, of course; who'd ya think I meant? We're the generation who didn't wait for it to be legal...)

What? I'm still not assassinated? Wow! Yay!

Step Eight: Eliminate registration for a military draft. Our soldiers need to come voluntarily, not by coercion.

Step Nine: Institute compulsory National Service for all citizens at the age of 18 or upon graduation from high school, whichever comes first--one year to be spent inside the US working in nursing homes, hospitals, the national parks, schools; building houses for Habitat for Humanity; working in community service agencies, etc. College education and/or full-time private sector jobs would officially begin AFTER the year of service--no exceptions to the rule, period. Jobs would be tailored for the disabled as well as the abled and would include some administration. Not only would this give everyone a shared life experience, a rite of passage, it would also allow kids to escape their home towns if they desired to. It would provide real-world job experience. Most importantly of all, it would provide the maturity needed to change a LOT of attitudes about college, drastically diminishing the "party school" mentality.

Step Ten: Since a college education is now required for the complexity of the majority of jobs which will be available, tax all corporate persons (hey, if they can contribute to a politician, they can damned well be responsible and pay their taxes) at a flat 10% of income--foreign as well as US, so they can't avoid it by hiding it--and use part of the money to make public college free for all US citizens through the Master's level. Include continuing education for all professions. Include lifelong continuing education for adults who are not in degree programs. (Hey, why shouldn't someone's ceramics hobby or love of singing, desire to write or love of dance keep more teachers employed?)

Okay, surely they assasinated me when I made them pay real taxes! What? My detective agency is worth the money, they found the dirt and kept me alive?! Yay!

Step Ten: Set generous minimum pay scales for all teachers, police officers, firefighters, EMTs, and all social workers, counselors, nurses, PAs, MAs, dentists and doctors working in social service agencies. There is no reason for the most valuable people in our society--the same people who make our society stable and cohesive!!--to be undervalued. Fund this with the rest of the corporate taxes. It'll take all the rest of the money because everyone'll be going back to school since it's free, so we'll need SCADS more teachers.

Step Eleven: Infrastructure. We are falling apart! Renew the WPA (and hire anyone who is willing to put in some hard labor) to rebuild the roads and schools, the bridges and dams and levies.

Step Twelve: More infrastructure. Build a national energy grid that supports all forms of renewable energy transmission. Build a national wireless network for data transmission. Build a national charging grid for electric vehicles.

Step Thirteen: End all subsidies for oil and natural gas, and institute a flat tax on all oil and natural gas production on federal lands at 35% of pre-expense income. Forgive the tax in proportional amounts for companies which retool for solar and wind energy production, but do not discontinue the tax once they are retooled. The oil and the natural gas BELONG to the citizens of the US and must be properly paid for. The sun and the wind are free.

This is where my detective agency, invaluable as it is, might fail me. I would not expect to survive this one. BUT if I managed to, I have so much more to get to!

Step Fourteen: Institute another Victory Garden campaign, fully funded, to teach people to grow organic heritage food for themselves. Include funding for effective community gardens at both city and neighborhood levels. Promote edible landscaping for both residential areas and city-owned properties; encourage excess produce giveaways to food banks.

Step Fifteen: Encourage home wind and/or solar power generation. Provide a national education campaign and grants or tax credits. Require all electric companies to buy individually-produced renewable energy from residents and local businesses. (Yes, indeed, my detective agency is working overtime now! lol!)

Step Sixteen: Encourage rainwater harvesting and storage, and gray water recycling systems. Require all local governments to make it legal; write it into the current national building codes. Provide a national education campaign and grants or tax credits.

Step Seventeen: Encourage composting toilets. Require all local governments to make them legal; write them into the current national building codes. Provide a national education campaign and grants or tax credits.

Steps fourteen through seventeen can all be administered through county extension agencies. Tis a logical extension of their current services.

Step Eighteen: Create a National Homesteading Act that actually protects homeowners in a reasonable and responsible way.

Step Nineteen: Encourage nationwide mass transit. Create a federal public agency to do feasibility studies for cities and counties. Encourage bus and light rail systems that link towns, cities, counties. Provide a national education campaign about the benefits of mass transit; subsidize expanded service. Encourage and subsidize passenger train service; restore it between all major cities. Encourage and subsidize electric trains.

Step Twenty: Throw out the tax laws. Institute a flat 10% income tax on all personal income over the federal poverty level. No graduated taxes, not exceptions, no complications... just ten percent tax over the poverty level. Institute a flat 10% tax on all foreign and domestic business income after expenses.

Step Twenty-one: Change national immigration policies to make immigration not just possible, but easy. The forms are a nightmare, especially for those who don't speak English as a first language. The fees are high. The restrictions are unreasonable.

Okay at this point I may still be alive, but lord love a duck am I tired!

Step Twenty-two: take a vacation!

You'll notice there's a lot I didn't get to, and a lot that's kinda vague. It would call for some serious research to do things right, yanno?

My goal would be to stabilize the country as fast as possible, to get people working and restore a measure of security to our everyday lives, to begin to transition away from heavy pollution and bring balance back to the land. People need to know that they will be able to take care of themselves, of their families; that they'll have a place to live and a place to work, the ability to pay their bills and improve their lives, and a way to get clean water, to breathe clean air, to eat clean food.

People who have this level of security don't need to hate and fear others. They're pretty busy building a booming economy, and way more likely to have a "live and let live" attitude. That means after the vacation I could get to work on civil rights.