Issue 264 Don't tax our kids Febuary 4, 2014

 
Yup, here in America children are taxed. Not just any children, but the children that work part time jobs earning a legitimate pay check. I find it very messed up and want it stopped.

Those who tax kids: The federal government taxes them by taking a portion from their paycheck. Usually though, that money is later given back. But when that money is given back, the State and sometimes local government tax the tax return. On top of that the State and local government tax the child's regular income as well. This of course is done by both States and Localities that have an income tax in the first place. Silly isn't it.

Why we should not tax them: My main reason for not taxing them is because they cannot vote. Children under age 18 cannot vote in any election or referendum. As such they have no say on how their tax dollars are spent and on how much of their money is taken from them in the first place. In short, they have no say in society. Therefore, because they do not have a say, it is taxation without representation.

Let us not forget that some of these kids really want to go to college or they are impoverished and are trying to help out their families. By taking this money (even if temporarily in some cases) it inhibits there ability to not only save money but to help there families when and where they need it. From groceries to bill paying, children who work help out when they can because they love their family and want to protect them. It is not right to take money from the mouth of babes.

Going a step further: If I could, I would make anyone under the age of 25 nontaxable as well. This allows both kids and young adults a solid financial footing and gives them a chance to earn a larger paycheck and pay off college debts all that much faster. Mind you, I am already 25 so if this is ever passed, I would not be able to take advantage of such a benefit, but I want the generations to come to have a better chance at earning more income faster than I did.

Conclusion: I sincerely believe that people under a certain age should be tax exempt based on there ability to represent themselves (all those under 18 if they are working). These kids need all the advantages they can get and making them exempt from income taxes is one of the best advantages I can think of to help insure that they come out more financially secure than there peers who did not get this sort of advantage. Come on America, you know this is the right thing to do, so let’s get to it.

Issue 263 Don't tax our seniors Febuary 3, 2014

Our senior citizens have done much to build us up. They have toiled away for most of there lives trying to make a better life for themselves and their families. Yet we continue to tax them. Should we not give back to them rather than steal from their bank accounts? I think so and here is how I think it should be done.

Federal level: At this level of government seniors are subject to progressive income taxes, taxes for Social Security and Medicare, taxes on their investments and their retirement. I say that we stop taxing all of these things. Starting at age 70, seniors become entirely tax exempt from all forms of direct taxation. While age 70 is a good start (age 75 is the current life expectancy in the United States) it will gradually go down to age 60. This would allow for seniors at age 60 to begin earning larger paychecks before retirement at age 65 when they become eligible for Social Security and Medicare benefits. As such, seniors may not have to work as hard, or as long, allowing them to retire earlier and even hopefully relax.

State and local: Here again seniors are taxed on all forms from income, from investments and even property. They are also subject to sales taxes as well. Here too direct taxation (anything that is not considered a sales tax) should be removed as a burden from them. They already struggle to live on limited incomes upon retirement, and yet the government continues to steal all that money (and in some cases taxing it twice). I have met too many seniors who struggle after retirement and are thus forced to work even into there 80s and 90s (my grandmother works at a children's clinic at age 87) just to get by. It is disgraceful to a society to subject our seniors to possible impoverishment.

Logic: Our seniors have done much to advance this country forward and yet they are taxed. Retirement does not come with an ever lasting money supply that will allow all seniors to live comfortably and to take money from an already limited income, to me, is theft. There are also those seniors who suffer from diseases, and conditions that increase their medical expenses which further limit their disposable income. As such, letting them keep and earn more if they decide they want to continue working is the best solution as they are thus less likely to need to apply for welfare or aid from the government in general.

Also, let us not forget that paying taxes and filling out forms for special exceptions becomes both burdensome and stressful for seniors which can exacerbate any physical ailments. By eliminating taxation on these seniors there becomes no need for many of those special forms save those to apply for a reduced water bill and the like. In short, less complex forms to fill out saves seniors from the burden of having to look for these financial breaks and filling out the forms in the first place.

Reducing there taxes to zero also allows seniors to stay in there homes by making it more affordable to stay in them as they will not have to pay taxes on the property. It allows seniors flexibility on living arrangements and allows them to tap into there investments without fear of the dreaded tax day that many Americans loath. In my opinion it is about giving our seniors the break they need while reducing the number that need help later on in life.

Conclusion: Some may be asking about those rich seniors like Warren Buffet or George Soros. Well, I don't care. This is not about the money a senior has or has yet to earn. It is all about recognizing first and foremost that those senior citizens helped build our country and that they earned a break from the pressures government puts on them in life. You all already know that I hate the income tax and that I wish it would all go away. However, I know that it is nearly impossible to be rid of it as it stands right now. As such, I will look for ways to get rid of it, piece by piece and who better to stop taxing first than the senior citizens who deserve a break life's burdens.

Issue 262 Other Telepresence applications January 31, 2014

Aside from hospitals, businesses and court rooms, the telepresence technology can be applied to a multitude of other places in society. Here are just a few.

Marriage: Say you want to be married by a priest or a particular type of minister, the telepresence robot or device can allow for just that anywhere in the world. You can have a priest marry you on the top of Mt. Everest without having the priest clime to the top with you. In addition, say your mother in law is bed ridden and cannot attend the wedding in person, the robot can move around and interact at the wedding for her while she lies comfortably at home. Sure it removes some of the intimacy from a wedding but for those that are not picky it can be very useful.

Hospitalized/bedridden: This technology lets the individual get out without ever leaving their bed. They can use the robot version of this technology to meet and interact with family anywhere. If applied, the robot could even be able to go to the super market for you with you monitoring its progress at home. It allows interaction with the cashier and objects (if equipped with a mechanical arm). Additionally, the robot can be used to allow the bedridden to do house chores if suitably equipped. This grants a certain level of independence to the sick and elderly.

Search and rescue: Search and rescue teams are using more and more robots and they can be equipped with telepresence devices to allow interaction between the victim of a disaster and themselves. Basic human interaction can be key to calming the victim and even helping to diagnose the physical condition of the victim before help even arrives. This allows for rescuers to prep much faster to the needs of the victim to treat there injuries and understand the victims overall condition as the rescue continues.

Prison visitation: For many prisoners, the human interaction of knowing people still care for them on the outside is essential to keeping them from returning to crime. However, it can be hard for many families of these prisoners to make the trip to visit there loved ones and a simple phone call may still be lacking. As such, telepresence could help with that. For one, making face to face contact with your loved ones (even via computer) can enhance that the overall experience to allow for that much needed human interaction. Additionally, certain prisoners could be allowed to have a telepresence robot attend say their sons or daughter basketball game or wedding even if they cannot be there themselves due to there incarceration. This too will help prisoners not miss out on what is going on in the outside world and keep that human connection to there loved ones. Obviously the use of the telepresence device is a privilege to be reserved to only the most well behaved prisoners.

Conclusion: As you can see, the applications that this technology can be applied to are only going to grow. Of course there will be social issues to deal with as we use the telepresence machines as surrogates to our real selves. This can be worked out however as we proceed further with this technology and its increasing potential.

Issue 261 Telepresence court January 30, 2014

You may have heard of the word telepresence or even read my article here on my blog about it. For those who don't know what it is, it is the use of a remote operated robot or device where a doctor or a boss in a company can have it move around and conduct day to day business without ever leaving the office. It does have limitations, but for those jobs that don't require a hand's on approach it works. In this case, could the same concept be expanded into the court room?

With respect to prisoners: Right now tax payers pay our government thousands of dollars a year with some of that money going to pay for what goes on in a court room. One of the most expensive aspects of this is the protecting of a prisoner or suspect to and from the jails for prosecution, hearings or business that requires a defendant to be in the court room in general. As such, the telepresence device could be used in the defendant’s stead. This meets with the Constitutional requirement that stipulates that the defendant must be able to face his/her accusers. The robot thankfully does just that via its camera, listening device and speaker for when the defendant wishes to speak. As such, no longer will we have to deal with the cost of transporting potentially dangerous criminals or protecting them while in transport to and from the jail and the court room.

This benefit also expands to defendants who committed crimes in multiple States. So say you have a defendant who committed a crime in both New York and Georgia (or even another country), the telepresence device can be used to have the defendant be present for both hearing and trials in both places and simultaneously if necessary. Again, this saves money as police no longer have to escort the defendant via aircraft or car from one State (or country) to another. This saves countless dollars in just transport costs alone.

Additionally, many juries judge a defendant also on looks. An example is from presidential elections, the younger looking guy usually wins because they are more attractive. In the case of the court room it works the same way, the young/good looking get an edge over the ugly. This technology removes the looks factor to make it harder to make a decision on the person’s guilt based on looks and puts the burden of proof much more squarely on the facts.

With respect to Judges and lawyers: Again, this technology allows for the lawyers or Judges to appear in court without actually being there physically. Say the best lawyer in the country is in Texas, but the trial is in Alaska. The telepresence device can allow that lawyer to be there to defend the client without having to even make the trip. How about the Judge getting into an accident or it’s a special federal court that exists only in one place? This allows the judge to be present even if incapacitated of if he/she needs to be in a specific place at a key specific time. So if you are pulled over for a ticket and want to dispute it, you may be able to dispute the ticket right there on the side of the road with the judge via telepresence.

Conclusion: This is a fun and interesting technology that has many applications. The court room is just one place that can use telepresence that will in turn save the taxpayers allot of money. See you tomorrow for other intriguing applications for this technology.

Issue 260 Radicalized by cop! January 29, 2014

This topic is controversial. Police officers and intelligence agencies have been contacting Muslims who seem to be sympathetic to the Al Quada's and similar group’s ideology. At this point, the police/intelligence official pretends to be a recruiter from a terrorist group and try to "recruit" the Muslim individual. Usually, they set up a fake meet up to buy bomb making materials. But here is the controversial part. If the police never made contact with that individual, would they have become radicalized in the first place?

Pros: Those in favor of this method of policing and capturing terrorists point out that the individual being targeted was sympathetic to the terrorist cause in the first place. Also, they claim that it was better that they made contact with the individual over an actual terrorist recruiter where they may have actually carried out a terrorist act. Overall, those in favor of this method believe they are protecting our nation.

Cons: People who are against this method say this is a form of entrapment. In other words, the police are setting the individual up to become a criminal in the first place. As such, those against this policy believe that the individual would never have needed to be arrested in the first place if the individual was not radicalized by the officer or intelligence official.

Fact: We cannot prove or disprove if the individual would have become radicalized on there own or not. If taken to the Supreme Court however, this policing method may be ruled as entrapment and thus mean the program will be put to a halt.

Conclusion: I personally do not care for how this program is being carried out. It is disturbing that the police are actually creating terrorists out of innocent people. What I feel that they should do is monitor the individual to see if they make contact with an actual terrorist recruiter. At this point examine the conversations and if it seems that the individual being monitored is being radicalized then replace the recruiter with an officer who will now play the roll of the recruiter. However, before setting up a situation that would allow for an arrest, the officer should make attempts to de-radicalize the subject in question. If successful, the suspect would be monitored for an adequate period of time to insure they are no threat to society. However, if this fails, then you go in and bust the suspect by finding out what they are doing to carry out the criminal act with the police playing the roll of the recruiter still, but at this point leading them to stores or facilities that can be monitored by the police and insure the plot fails if one should emerge. As to the actual recruiter, find him/her and remove there ability to radicalize other individuals. This in my opinion is how it should be done.

Issue 259 Too many Federal cops January 28, 2013

Have you noticed in the Federal government’s alphabet soup of agencies and departments, most of them are law officers? ATF, DEA, FBI, NSA, CIA, U.S. Marshals, ICE, TSA, and the list keeps going. We even have swat teams in both the EPA and the Department of Education. Is this a little ridiculous?

Overlap: For one, many of these police forces have overlapping responsibilities. ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco and Fire arms) deals with drugs, guns, and illegal selling of liqueur. But many States have police forces doing that exact same job. DEA (drug enforcement agency) plays a similar role in the battle against illegal drugs. But the FBI, ATF and TSA along with local police also deal with those same groups of criminals. Why all the overlap you ask? Simple, government has had one key problem that has always existed. That problem is where one group or agency seeks to gather as much power as possible to do all the jobs of the other groups. At that point it makes that particular agency more important than the others and thus money and power get concentrated in that agency. Other agencies see this and thus begin to do the same thing. Needless to say it wastes taxpayer money significantly.

What to cut and merge: In my opinion, the EPA, department of Education should not have any special police forces. In fact, no agency should have a police force with the exception of the FBI. This gives the FBI complete control over Federal law enforcement responsibilities. So if the EPA wants to use a SWAT team on "something" or some one (who knows why they need a SWAT team in the first place), they must go to the FBI. At this point, the FBI would justify if the act warrants the use of Federal law enforcement or if it would be better handled by local police or a lawyer. This hopefully would reduce the amount of unnecessary raids like those conducted by the DEA or ATF on people for "nickel bags" of weed or false reports of guns in the home of an individual. Also, intelligence agencies like the NSA, CIA and others should be merged as well. They already act as data hubs for information and work in the service of the country to protect us. Therefore combining them makes sense (especially as they did not share information with each other which could have stopped 9/11). In the end, only two key police agencies would exist, the FBI and a new form of the central intelligence agency. Likewise, we can just be rid of certain federal law enforcement that has no business existing (in this case, in instances where local police are better able to carry out the same task). Guarding our boarder can be done by the National Guard services which would probably be a more effective deterrent to cartels trying to sneak over the boarder. But this is all just an idea. However I believe you my dear reader get the point. We are wasting money doing things that are either better handled by local cops or merging groups together to get the job done more efficiently and effectively.

Conclusion: When did the federal government become so police oriented that we became the democratic equivalent of a police state. With all these laws on the books (many are either unenforceable or even not needed) it is no wonder we have all these police just trying to enforce these so called "laws". The old adage is too much is no good. You know what, if America keeps up this pace, America will stop being good.

Issue 258 Irresponsible Politics January 27, 2014

Well it has been a few weeks since the news broke on Governor Christies of New Jersey Bridge gate scandal. And months have passed since a number of the presidents scandals. But what I want to talk about here is not the scandals alone, but how irresponsible both have been and to use them as an example as to what not to do in a public office.

The Governor: Governor Christie is in charge of New Jersey. Anything that goes wrong is on him, so when members of his staff reduce the lanes on the George Washington Bridge to one in order to cause massive traffic in a ploy to get revenge on a mayor that did not endorse the Governor in the last race, then blame should fall right on the Governors shoulders. Needless to say, a senior citizen died on the way to the hospital due to traffic caused by this childish revenge scheme. I will not have any mercy for Governor Christie. It happened on his watch whether he orchestrated it or not. Your staff is your responsibility and thus the Governor must accept the consequences.

Another possible incident could have occurred during the 2012 election. This is pure speculation, but the Governor getting along well with President Obama after hurricane sandy and making the President look good at that time may have been a revenge play against Mitt Romney who passed over Governor Christie as a potential Vice Presidential candidate. Could we be seeing a pattern here or are we putting too much thought into this? I am not sure myself.

The President: President Obama has some scandals of his own. The first scandal is the program known as "Fast and Furious" (not the movie). Here the ATF had licensed gun dealers sell to known gun runners for the drug cartels so as to track where the weapons go. However, the entire program was a fiasco. Almost none of the guns were properly tracked and thus thousands of U.S. firearms were used in gang violence and mass murder over the border in Mexico. It is incalculable to tell how many innocents lost their lives as a result of this program.

Next is the IRS scandal where the IRS agents gave Tea Party and other conservative minded groups a hard time during the 2012 elections with respect to there tax exempt statuses. It was hoped by these agents to impede the conservative groups enough to protect key politicians on the Democratic and the Republican tickets. As such, many of the tea party challengers could not raise adequate funds to capture the Senate, let alone more seats in the House of Representatives.

Finally we have the Benghazi scandal. All people involved have been forced to sign non-disclosure agreements, save a few who decided to speak out regardless. In this scandal, four Americans (one of whom was a U.S. Ambassador) were killed by terrorists in Benghazi in Libya. The facility attacked was not adequately defended nor did it meet with proper security procedures. Also, the rescue team was delayed. Another stain on the White House, and President Obama's record.

Conclusion: In all three of these incidents, the President has been shielded from blame. News media covered these incidents lightly. The Governor on the other hand is being dragged through the mud. In both cases, regardless of knowledge, the leader is responsible for the whims of there staff. As such, President Obama and Governor Christie are to be held accountable for what their staff did. Is this a symptom of government being so big that even the leader of the Country (or State) cannot keep track of there staff? If the bridge was privatized in New Jersey, would this incident have happened? Getting rid of the ATF would certainly change things in the federal government and not taxing the equivalent of a business would have protected the Tea Party groups (and all other groups) from possible attacks and reprisals by various politicians. Benghazi should have never have happened in the first place. These scandals show the symptoms, in my belief, as to why the federal government and even the State governments are dysfunctional. Maybe it is time we cut the bull crap and make government work effectively by making it small.