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Sunday, October 10, 2010

More Signs This May Be A Blowout Election

It appears that Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) is neck and neck with her Republican challenger--at least in part because of accepting illegal campaign contributions, according to this October 8, 2010 New York Daily News article.  McCarthy has always been an ineffective, one-issue candidate.  She ran for office on a gun control platform after the murder of her husband and severe injury of her son by a mentally ill black racist.

I am not at all surprised that Ms. McCarthy became a gun control activist.  Had she been of a less liberal persuasion, she might have become a raving racist instead.  A more thoughtful person would have wondered if the real problem was the destruction of the mental health system instead--because the man who murdered her husband and five others was clearly mentally unstable and dangerous well before the incident.

I think Republicans stand a good chance of a really astonishing blowout in November.  This makes it all the more important that they stop listening to the corporate special interests that own the Democratic Party (and have historically owned much of the Republican Party).

1. Cut spending first of all.  That's more important than a tax cut at this point, because a reduction in spending (starting with the Health Care Deform law, and farm price supports) would reduce the deficit, and jump start the economy.

2. Close the border.  There are a lot of National Guardsmen who are unemployed right now, and if you gave them a chance to patrol our border, would be overjoyed to have a paying job.  If need be, Congress could direct the President to call up whatever part of the unorganized militia of the border states is required to patrol the border.  Even military pay for a lot of the unemployed members of the unorganized militia would probably be an improvement over what many of them have coming in right now.

3. Enforce existing immigration law against employers.  Many employers may honestly not realize that they are hiring illegal aliens, but when I read accounts of employers who have submitted the same Social Security number for a thousand different names, who's kidding whom?  How long would it take for a million illegal aliens to get the message and go home, opening up jobs for unemployed American citizens and legal residents?  And if there are not quite enough legal job seekers, and Wal-Mart, agribusinesses, and others have to raise wages so that unskilled and semiskilled laborers are closer to standing on their own two feet--do you suppose that might rebound to the benefits of whoever passes such laws?

4. Remove all barriers to interstate health care pools.  I would imagine that there are a lot of self-employed people out there, and people working in jobs without health insurance, who would be overjoyed to join a 50 state insurance pool with 30 million members in it.  Do you suppose that 30 million members might be able to get a reasonable health insurance plan from the free market?

5. Prohibit foreign governments or foundations from providing funds to build or operate a religious institution in the United States unless that government or host country allows reciprocal rights.  In short, if the Saudi government is going to fund building mosques in America, it needs to allow foreign funding to build houses of worship on an equal basis in Saudi Arabia.  I think you would be amazed at how rapidly the Saudis would stop funding mosques in America.  This does not run afoul of the First Amendment's establishment clause or free exercise clause.  You could even make a case that it actually fully implements the establishment clause, by preventing foreign governments from creating an establishment of religion in America with their taxes--while not allowing an equal opportunity there.

3 comments:

  1. Would your proposal no. 5 make it illegal for the Holy See? It looks as if the answer would be yes, because the Vatican (a foreign state) isn't about to allow the construction of Protestant churches within its (admittedly exiguous) borders.

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  2. I don't know how much money the Vatican actually puts into U.S. churches. My impression is none. I get the impression that the Catholic Church is pretty much financially autonomous in most countries.

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  3. You're right Clayton, the Catholic Church is essentially financially autonomous, although the Vatican does get some money from the various dioceses around the world.

    Even then, the Vatican actually doesn't have as big a budget as you might think. $260 million was the budget last I heard and they were running a deficit at that level, so it's pretty small, smaller than many US dioceses.

    Just how poor is the Vatican? They sold the copyrights of the images of the Sistine Chapel to a Japanese company to pay for the restoration of the chapel http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/27/how_to_copyright_michelangelo/. That's not something you do if you're rolling in the dough.

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