UPDATE: After it became obvious that my initial comment to the Heritage blog had been rejected, I wrote what immediately follows below. I then linked it all — this web page — in a second comment submission to the same Heritage blog article. That second comment submission was accepted for posting and became the 53rd (and last) comment for the article. I have included the second comment below after the first comment.
Steven A. Sylwester
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A Google search of my name — "Steven A. Sylwester" — will reveal that I regularly make comments at the Heritage Foundation website — usually very long comments. I have been commenting there for a long time, so it is rare now that a comment of mine is rejected. In the beginning, that was not the case. Back then, I was still too much of a Democrat to give due deference to the Republican sensibility, and so I overstepped without meaning to. My challenge to myself for several years now has been to find what I call The Middle Ground, and to then stake my claim there. I am not a liberal Democrat — not at all. In fact, I now self-identify as a liberal Republican, no longer as a conservative Democrat. Yet some of my truths are ultra-liberal by most common estimations, even though I believe those truths are so grounded in conservative thinking that they are ultra-conservative if anything. Because a conservative will usually reject a liberal thought as something silly, the challenge is to overcome that bias — that prejudice — with an argument that is more conservative in its assertions and judgments than what is usual in conservative thinking. That is not to create a ruse or a masquerade on my part, but is rather to give greater clarity to the world as it actually is, for one cannot truly conserve something without first seeing that "something" plainly. Webster's Dictionary states the oldest definition of "conserve" as: to keep in a safe or sound state: PRESERVE. In my opinion, a true conservative does just that with what he/she thinks are the essential aspects of America from its founding to the present. To preserve America is to keep it safe and sound — to see the treasure and dignify it, and to share in that mutual pledge of the signers of The Declaration of Independence: "to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."
The following essay is too good and too revealing of an essential truth to be forever lost in a blog moderator's trash at the Heritage Foundation. Sadly, I know from my Google Analytics that the rejection was due to a pondered thought. Somewhere in the following, I overstepped; I attempted too much to kill a sacred cow. I am sure some at the Heritage Foundation would disagree with the moderator's choice in rejecting my essay. After all, the Heritage Foundation policy concerning blog comments is this:
"Comments are subject to approval and moderation. We remind everyone that The Heritage Foundation promotes a civil society where ideas and debate flourish. Please be respectful of each other and the subjects of any criticism. While we may not always agree on policy, we should all agree that being appropriately informed is everyone's intention visiting this site. Profanity, lewdness, personal attacks, and other forms of incivility will not be tolerated. Please keep your thoughts brief and avoid ALL CAPS. While we respect your first amendment rights, we are obligated to our readers to maintain these standards. Thanks for joining the conversation."
I strongly encourage everyone to be a regular reader of the Heritage website, especially if you do not generally agree with the conservative opinion. The Middle Ground is big enough for a multitude, but it requires of everyone an open mind that does not limit its truth to the platform of any particular political party. Truth is truth is truth. Evidently, the following has a little too much of an inconvenient truth — a truth that can destroy a paradigm.
The bottom line is this: Everything is interconnected, and the two-headed dragon — the inseparable monster wreaking havoc on the American economy — is "Health Care Costs" and "Education Costs." I have found the sword that can slay the dragon, but many would prefer to keep the dragon alive, as if we are talking about "Puff, The Magic Dragon" of our long ago youth. Know this: the two-headed dragon will kill America if we do not kill it first. God help us.
Steven A. Sylwester
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The article that inspired the following essay can be read at:
http://blog.heritage.org/2012/01/31/morning-bell-a-higher-education-revolution/
If you truly want a revolution in American higher education to make it affordable, you will have to go to places in your mind that you fear and, once there, you will have to brave new thinking — thinking that will have the power to transform you and your paradigm if you will let it. It is not necessary to give up conservatism, but it is necessary to kill a sacred cow or two so the true definition of what conservatism should be in America can finally be seen clearly and then embraced.
Understand this: higher education costs are soaring because health insurance costs are soaring because medical care costs are soaring BECAUSE medical care costs are NOT subject to free market corrections BECAUSE health insurance costs are NOT subject to free market corrections. Therefore, higher education costs are NOT subject to free market corrections. Consequently, conservatism that holds free markets to be sacrosanct MUST NOT fall prey to thinking that believes all things are kept in check and balance by free markets. Collusion exists wherever it can exist, and collusion kills the effectiveness of the self-correcting mechanism of free markets — kills it dead. In fact, so kills it that the dragon monster in the cave no longer has an enemy able to stand against it, and that monster in the American economy is the two-headed dragon "Medical Care Costs" and "Higher Education Costs."
President Obama went to the University of Michigan to give his speech, so I will use that university as my model.
I just telephoned University of Michigan Human Resources, and a helpful person there informed me that UMich has approximately 40,000 employees, including both faculty and staff, and that somewhere between 30,000 and 35, 000 of those employees receive benefits, including health insurance. Furthermore, I was told that all employees receiving health insurance receive the same health insurance at the same cost, both the lowly custodian and the top university executive administrator, and that the per employee per month cost of that health insurance is approximately $1,200.00. So, doing the math at the mid-range point of 32,500 employees with benefits, UMich spends approximately $39 million per month every month to provide its employees with health insurance. Repeat: Insurance premiums of $39 million per month!
According to Wikipedia, UMich has 41,674 students (26,208 undergraduates and 15,466 post graduates) and an academic staff of 6,238 (meaning: 5.4 staff positions for every one teaching position). Doing the math: $39 million divided by 41,674 students equals almost $936 per student per month in tuition costs to pay for health insurance for the UMich employees who have benefits. Because yearly tuition pays for nine months of instruction and health care premiums must be paid every month twelve months a year, the yearly tuition cost paid by each student to pay only for the health insurance benefit for UMich employees totals as much as $11,230.00, and that number will continue to go up at the same percentage rate that health insurance premiums go up as long as there is not a reduction in health plan coverages. Repeat: Tuition costs per student as much as $11,230.00 per year to pay for health insurance alone!
The two-headed dragon must be slain, and the free market is wholly incapable of doing that heroic deed. Conservatism MUST find its true definition and MUST do what needs to be done, which I have detailed at: here
http://steven-a-sylwester.blogspot.com/2009/12/nationalize-us-private-health-insurance.html
and for which I have argued in defense of my own proposal at: here
http://steven-a-sylwester.blogspot.com/2011/11/my-comments-to-heritage-blog-regarding.html
But more still needs to be done than just solving the health care crisis. Conservatism MUST demand that America be restored by the nation receiving fair compensation for its goods and services, meaning: here
http://steven-a-sylwester.blogspot.com/2011/12/this-deserves-macarthur-genius-award.html
Read my COMMENTARY at that last link — force yourself by any means necessary!
Finally, read my "Proposal #6: Public Education" at: here
http://steven-a-sylwester.blogspot.com/2012/01/restated-and-proposed-amendments-to-us.html
God help us.
Steven A. Sylwester
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MY SECOND COMMENT SUBMISSION WHICH WAS ACCEPTED AND POSTED AS COMMENT #53 AT: http://blog.heritage.org/2012/01/31/morning-bell-a-higher-education-revolution/#idc-cover
Mike Brownfield,
Just so you know: http://steven-a-sylwester.blogspot.com/2012/02/he...(this web page)
I do not know if you moderate the comments for your own articles, but you should if you do not.
I submitted my comment (now at the above link) when no comments were yet posted for this article. In fact, my very reasonable hope was that my comment might be posted as the first comment. But, alas, my comment was rejected by the blog moderator. At this point, you might safely post this comment as a last comment after all the readers have already left. Good enough. Just do it.
What my comment reveals is startling. It startled me, and I am already jaded to the point where all of my illusions are long-ago shattered. I am so jaded that I am now convinced that liberalism is a sinking ship and that conservatism is the last hope for America. However, conservatism akin to an ostrich with its head buried in the sand is as doomed as any pie-in-the-sky liberalism; lies, half-truths, wild imaginations, wishful thoughts — call them what you may — but know this: anyone who does not look at the stark bare-naked problem plainly and close-up is basing his/her thinking on guesses that have been formed by biases and prejudices.
Do Not Be Stupid. That is my First Rule for myself, and it should be your First Rule, too. Think about things as if your life depended on it — as if your children's lives depended on it — as if the life of your nation depended on it. Throw out "Stupid" — eliminate it! Confront the truth of the matter, whatever that truth might be.
The truth is this: at UMich (and at every other university in America with a similar student : teacher : staff ratio), the student must pay as much as $11,230.00 in tuition costs per year to pay for health insurance for someone else, even if the student has no health insurance at all for him/herself, and that — a translated $1,200/month/employee premium — pays for an excellent full-coverage policy on a group health insurance basis. That is an outrage, yet that is the buried truth fueling the rising costs of higher education.
Mr. Brownfield, have you ever participated at the table in a labor contract negotiation from the first meeting through the last meeting? I have — twice! It is an excruciating process, and the second time through shatters every illusion you ever had, and then crushes the shards of your illusions to sand and then to dust before your eyes. Finally, after all of that and the pondering of all of that for years thereafter, the sun comes out again and you can see things clearly like you have never seen them before. That is the vantage point from which I am sharing what I know.
What I know is this: The paradigm requiring employers to fund and process group health insurance policies that are contracted with profit-driven private health insurance companies is what is destroying America's economy by destroying America's businesses and America's educational institutions. The paradigm thrives on a self-perpetuating collusion that is plain-as-day to anyone with eyes to see it, and the collusion is unavoidable and inevitable because the Health Care Loop is a closed economic system that is not vulnerable to free market corrections except at the point of total economic collapse at the national level. I am not kidding — not at all. If pragmatic conservative capitalists cannot see what I see, America is doomed to a slow death that will be catastrophic in the end.
Get This Straight: A free market economy must have free markets that are absolutely and completely vulnerable to market corrections in every respect or there is no free market economy at all. Instead, there is only the illusion of a free market economy that is in truth hiding a fertile ground on which economic cancers will inevitably sprout and grow and thrive wherever market corrections are not allowed to happen until after the economic cancer has already metastasized and economic death is certain. That is dire — and that is where we are now.
Do not fiddle around with this. Do not create false hopes around illusions that hide the truth. The problem can be solved. The problem must be solved. And conservatives must lead the way.
Steven A. Sylwester
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Monday, January 30, 2012
The Constitution of The United States: Restated and Proposed Amendments
This web address can also be accessed at: bit.ly/zPQ2MV
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The following restated and proposed amendments to The Constitution of The United States were written by me without the help of others.
Steven A. Sylwester
January 30, 2012
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RESTATEMENTS OF EXISTING AMENDMENTS:
Amendment II
Plain Sentence: A well-regulated Militia shall not be infringed, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms being necessary to the security of a free State.
Amendment IV
Plain Sentence: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects shall not be violated against unreasonable searches and seizures, and no Warrants shall issue supported by Oath or affirmation but upon probable cause and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Amendment V
Plain Sentence: No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, when in actual service in time of War or public danger unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Amendment VI
Plain Sentence: The accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial in all criminal prosecutions and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.
Amendment VII
Plain Sentence: The right of trial by jury shall be preserved where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars in Suits at common law, and no fact tried by a jury than according to the rules of the common law shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States.
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RESTATED EXISTING CONSTITUTIONAL LANGUAGE PROPOSED AS A NEW AMENDMENT:
The United States Constitution reads: Article II, Section 1. [5] No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; …
Plain Sentence: No person except (either) a natural born Citizen at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution or a Citizen of the United States shall be eligible to the Office of President; …
Simplified Plain Sentence Restatement: No person except a Citizen of the United States shall be eligible to the Office of President; …
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NEW PROPOSED AMENDMENTS:
Proposal #1: Supreme Court Gender Equality
Gender equality shall be guaranteed on the Supreme Court and on the Court of Appeals according to the following:
1. The Congress shall determine an odd number of Justices no fewer than nine who shall together compose the Supreme Court. The total number of Justices shall include one Chief Justice of the United States and the remaining even number of Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, of whom all shall be citizens of the United States.
Of the total number of Associate Justices, half shall be male by legal designation and half shall be female by legal designation.
When vacancies occur, the President shall nominate Justices to the Supreme Court who are then appointed by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate. The Chief Justice shall be appointed for nine years, and shall not be reappointed Chief Justice thereafter. Associate Justices shall be appointed to hold their offices during good behavior. Successive Chief Justices shall alternate between male and female without exception.
The President shall nominate the Chief Justice according to gender from among the Associate Justices, except no person shall be eligible for nomination who would be more than 69 years old at the time of appointment. If no Associate Justice is qualified by age to be appointed the Chief Justice, the President shall appoint any other qualified person.
If an Associate Justice is nominated to be the Chief Justice by the President but fails to be appointed by the Senate, that Associate Justice shall retain the position of Associate Justice. If an Associate Justice becomes the Chief Justice, that Justice shall retire from the Supreme Court when the nine-year appointment as Chief Justice expires.
2. All Court of Appeals en banc courts shall be composed of an even number of Circuit Judges, of whom half shall be male by legal designation and half shall be female by legal designation. Only if the Circuit Chief Judge presides shall an entire en banc court be composed of an odd number of Judges.
3. Upon ratification, the amendment shall be enacted straightforwardly in due time.
All new Associate Justices shall be female until an equal number of male and female Associate Justices are seated on the Supreme Court. Thereafter, all Associate Justice seats will be identified as being either male or female, and will be filled as the need arises according to strict gender distinction without exception.
The current Chief Justice shall complete a nine-year term from the date he was sworn in as Chief Justice, and shall then immediately retire from the Supreme Court and shall be replaced by the first female Chief Justice of the United States. If the current Chief Justice leaves his position for any reason before his term expires, his appointed successor shall be female.
On a district basis, all Court of Appeals appointments shall be female until gender equality is achieved among active Circuit Judges. Thereafter, new appointments shall be made in a manner that maintains gender equality among all active Judges.
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Proposal #2: Universal Health Care
The government shall provide all citizens with free and equal health care, including all tests, treatments, medications, therapies, procedures, surgeries, hospitalizations, and long-term care that:
1) are legal and approved by the government,
2) are done according to government standards by government licensed physicians and practitioners,
3) are not subject to malpractice claims or lawsuits of any sort, and
4) are affordable within an overall government health care program budget that does not exceed 15% of the government’s GDP.
Government licensed physicians and practitioners who work solely within the government health care program shall be exempt from any need for professional malpractice insurance of any sort: they shall be personally immune in all cases from any legal claims or lawsuits that could result from patients who suffer injury, bad outcomes, or death while under their care. However, such physicians and practitioners shall be subject to loss of their license for professional malpractice and/or negligence, and may also be subject to criminal charges, and to their penalties if found guilty.
Personal health insurance and long-term care insurance shall be unnecessary, except to provide desired coverage for experimental care and extraordinary end-of-life care that is not approved by the government program.
The government health care program shall be paid for by two dedicated and approximately equal taxations: a national sales tax (excluding food and energy purchases) and a corporate and personal tax on equity in real property based on government assessed value (excluding hospitals, schools, governments, and approved religious organizations).
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Proposal #3: Multinational Corporations Designated Foreign Nations
Re: Article I Section 8. [3]
All multinational corporations or enterprises, international corporations, transnational corporations, and micro-multinational corporations with management headquarters located in a home country outside of the United States shall be recognized as foreign Nations, and shall be required to contract an Agreement with the United States Congress before selling their goods and services in the United States or its territories.
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Proposal #4: One Percent Ownership of Patents and Copyrights
Re: Article I Section 8. [8]
The United States shall have one percent (1%) ownership of each and every copyright and patent issued and registered by the United States government. The ownership shall be limited to the pre-tax gross revenues generated by any and all uses of that which is protected by U.S. copyright and patent law, and all such ownership shall be without exception. All revenues earned from such ownership shall be used to fund the free public education guaranteed to citizens by law, with all revenues from patents supporting Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics education exclusively and all revenues from copyrights supporting either Arts and Humanities education or Physical Education and Health education exclusively according to the general categories that create the revenues (i.e. computer-related patents support computer science education, music copyrights support music arts education, sporting event copyrights support physical education, and so forth).
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Proposal #5: Water, Sun, and Underground Natural Resources Management
Re: Article. IV. Section. 3. Paragraph. 2.
Section. 1.
The Congress shall have presiding jurisdiction over all public waters in the United States. Public waters shall be all waters:
1) from groundwater springs or from headwaters, snow melt, or runoff that combine to form brooks, creeks, and streams that flow into an ocean or gulf or that become tributaries to rivers that flow into an ocean or gulf;
2) from aquifers accessed or potentially accessed by human-made wells and/or pumping mechanisms; and
3) from lakes of any size and any origin that serve as water sources for any life-sustaining human uses, including fishing and agricultural uses.
The States shall be responsible for all waters of any sort originating in the States until the waters first cross a State boundary or until the waters begin to define the boundary between two States or two nations, at which point the federal government shall become wholly responsible for those waters thereafter.
Section. 2.
Presiding jurisdiction and responsibility shall be to guarantee pure and clean water:
1) that is free from human-made or human-caused pollutants that are toxic or harmful to any living creatures and/or plant life in nature and
2) that is treatable to be made safe for human drinking, cooking, and hygiene in every case, including in the case of pregnant women, except when natural flooding or other polluting disasters occur.
The Congress shall provide remedy if necessary when pollutions occur in public waters and shall legislate the fines and punishments to be levied when municipalities and/or companies are found guilty of polluting. The Congress shall act when new scientific discovery reveals that existing standards are insufficient to protect good health and when new technology invention allows for the affordable improvement of existing standards.
Reckless and/or negligent polluting of public waters shall be a felony, and willful polluting of public waters for profit that causes either human death or at least a yearlong loss of use of a public waters source that had been potable for an established population of more than 5,000 people shall be a capital offense. Corporate executives shall be held personally accountable for any polluting of public waters done by their companies when foreknowledge can be proven.
Section. 3.
Municipal water treatments shall include only those substances and processes that are used solely for water purification purposes. No municipal water treatments of any sort that are intended to be either medicinal or health promoting as additives in human drinking water shall be allowed.
Section. 4.
Nowhere in the United States shall public waters be controlled by a private citizen or by a corporation that is not a municipality. Public access to free drinking water shall be a human right at all times in every municipality in the United States. The legal owner of all public waters shall be the United States of America.
Section. 5.
The Congress shall have presiding jurisdiction over all known and unknown precious metals, minerals, ores, and energy-generating substances and gases that can be mined, drilled for, or otherwise taken from the Earth on the public lands, on the private lands, and in the territorial waters of the United States and its territories.
From public lands and territorial waters, as compensation for being the owner of the land and the ocean or gulf floor and for contracting extraction rights, the United States shall receive five percent (5%) of the pre-tax gross revenues generated from any and all extractions made by mining, drilling, or any other means. Any contracting of extraction rights shall be conditional upon actual work being done, and contracts shall be wholly rescinded if no extractions are made during any 365-day period following the signing of the contract. Extraction rights shall not be given to foreign nations or to companies that do not have their corporate headquarters in the United States.
From private lands, as compensation for being Sovereign and Protector of those lands and of the public roadways, highways, and waterways used for all necessary transporting, the United States shall receive four percent (4%) of the pre-tax gross revenues generated from any and all extractions made by mining, drilling, or any other means. If access to the Earth beneath public lands is made underground from private lands, the United States shall receive five percent (5%) of the pre-tax gross revenues generated from any and all extractions made by mining, drilling, or any other means.
Section. 6.
The United States shall spend all revenues earned from contracting extraction rights on public lands and in territorial waters as needed:
1) on environmental clean-ups that will create and protect pure and clean water;
2) on research to determine effective ways to replenish the depleting aquifers, especially the Ogallala Aquifer; and
3) on public waterworks projects that will enhance and protect the drinking water sources for established municipalities.
The United States shall spend all revenues earned from extractions made from private lands on the Nikola Tesla Project, which shall be a joint project with other cooperating nations to develop clean unlimited energy from the Earth and its higher atmosphere, especially from the ionosphere and the magnetosphere. When it is discovered how to harness controllable atmospheric electricity that can be used as a universal source of nonpolluting industrial power, the technology shall be freely shared among nations as a gift from the Creator to the whole world.
Section. 7.
A national building code shall require architectural design inclusion of dedicated efficient space for photo-voltaic system installations according to industry-established minimum space requirements for all new construction of residential, commercial, and governmental structures enclosing at least 1,000 square feet of heated space.
All existing structures shall be exempt as long as no remodeling involves any structural changes to existing roofs, excluding any structural changes that solely relate to replacing or installing gutters, low profile skylights, vents, satellite dishes, and/or roofing. Any structural additions to existing structures that add or alter roof-lines to accommodate additional square footage shall not be exempt from the code requirements.
Required shall be a minimum of 100 square feet of clear roof surface to accommodate solar modules or panels faced due south at an angle that matches the location’s latitude with an allowable 15- to 20-degree variation east or west from due south. The solar panels shall be located where they will not be shaded by trees or intruded upon by vents, chimneys, or other roof structure penetrations. An efficient accessible routing path from the roof array to a centralized inverter and then to the structure’s load center for the photo-voltaic system’s generated energy shall be required.
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Proposal #6: Public Education
Re: Article. I. Section. 8.
Section. 1.
The Congress shall fund, oversee the administration of, and nominate students to the six tuition-free United States military academies located at: West Point, New York, for the Army; Annapolis, Maryland, for the Navy and the Marine Corps; Colorado Springs, Colorado, for the Air Force; New London, Connecticut, for the Coast Guard; Kings Point, New York, for the Merchant Marine; and Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, Nebraska, for the Cyber/Biologic Defense.
Section. 2.
The Congress shall require the States to provide thirteen years of tuition-free public education for all United States citizens and all otherwise legal residents from age five through age eighteen. Public education shall be according to three national standards:
1) Every student shall be literate at no less than age-appropriate-grade-level (plus or minus one year) while being actively challenged and fully facilitated to achieve personal potentials in all core academic subjects, including those of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (“literate” being defined as educated, cultured, and lucid within an American social, philosophical, and historical context as taught in a thirteen-year standard curriculum that explores America from 1492 to the current time, with an ability to read, write, and effectively communicate in the English language using current computer technologies);
2) Exceptional students shall be individually advanced to the academic level at which they can succeed while being challenged; and
3) Students whose academic skills competency and knowledge proficiency are measured in the aggregate minimally either two years below or two years above age-appropriate-grade-level shall be designated as Special Education students and shall receive educational funding at twice the normal rate (competency and proficiency testing shall be done when requested by a teacher, parent, or student).
Thirteen years of tuition-free public education shall not be defined by the completion of a thirteen-year standard curriculum that ends in high school graduation in every case. Some lower-tier Special Education students will remain functionally illiterate despite all teaching efforts while some upper-tier Special Education students will graduate from a community college or a public university before their nineteenth birthday and shall thereby receive their college and/or university education on a tuition-free basis.
The term “tuition-free” applies only in the case of public education institutions, including any school designations that encompass any part of the spectrum from kindergarten enrollee through master degree recipient, that is: inclusive from primary school through public university. It does not include graduate studies at the doctoral degree level.
Students who enroll in private schools of any sort shall receive government vouchers that are the equivalent of their local public school tuition if the private schools they enroll in are accredited by the government. Government accreditation of private schools shall only regard standard subjects that are common to local public schools and shall not regard religious subjects of any sort. A homeschool student shall receive government vouchers to rent textbooks and an educational computer hardware and software package if those items have been approved and accredited by the government for homeschool use, if the student is fully registered according to the laws governing homeschool status and is government-approved in that status, and if the total worth of the vouchers for the student does not exceed the local public school tuition cost.
The government vouchers shall pay the vendor or the private school directly in all cases, and in no case shall government vouchers be redeemable for cash by either a student or a student’s parent or legal guardian.
Section. 3.
The Congress shall require the States to identify all exceptional students who are intellectually either moderately-to-highly gifted or exceptionally-to-profoundly gifted by standard academic measures (“moderately-to-highly gifted” being in the top two percent or 98th percentile and “exceptionally-to-profoundly gifted” being in the top one percent or 99th percentile). The United States shall recognize its most gifted citizens — its geniuses — as a natural resource and a national treasure, and shall maximize the potential of that resource and treasure through its public education system in every individual case beginning at the earliest possible opportunity. However, no interventions shall ever be made against the will of the student, regardless of the student’s potential to excel; the Pursuit of Happiness shall stand as an unalienable Right of every individual citizen, even the citizen who is a minor child.
The Congress shall forbid any notion that the purpose of public education is to socialize the citizenry. The purpose of public education shall be to make citizens literate in useful knowledge, confident in factoring new information into old thinking, and competent in self-directed analysis, so that public education might inspire joy and courage in its graduates through the benefits that derive from life-long learning habits, a purposeful informed participation in America’s future, and an enduring appreciation for political dissent and for the American free enterprise system. Public education in the United States shall work to cultivate this flower: that, in every citizen’s life, the gift to America shall be the citizen and the gift to the citizen shall be America.
Section. 4.
The Congress shall establish a national three-year merit-based public high school for the nation’s most intellectually gifted science-minded high school students. The national public high school shall be simultaneously located at no less than 150 public research university campuses nationwide, shall be tuition-free without exception, shall have highly selective enrollment with requirements and standards that cannot be challenged, and shall use the same intensive accelerated-learning curriculum at every site without exception. The defined curriculum shall offer courses in mathematics, computer science, and the physical sciences of chemistry and physics according to standard prerequisite streams, with the high school students enrolling in university classes with university students at times during all three years.
The offered majors shall be limited to:
1) Mathematics through at least Elementary Linear Algebra,
2) Computer Science through at least the standard university sophomore-year computer science sequence course for computer and information science majors that is taken concurrently with the Elements of Discrete Mathematics sequence,
3) Chemistry through the Organic Chemistry sequence and Organic Analysis, and
4) Physics through the standard university sophomore-year physics sequence course for physics majors that covers physics of waves and statistical thermodynamics.
All students shall take the same six Advanced Placement courses: English Language, United States History, United States Government & Politics, and Chemistry during the sophomore year and English Literature and Economics during the junior year. United States History and United States Government & Politics shall be combined as one course. All students shall concurrently take the university calculus sequence and the university calculus-based physics sequence before graduating. There shall be no electives other than choosing a major.
The national public high school capstone shall be a non-graded senior-year-long Colloquy on the topic: Morality, Ethics & Society: Science & Technology in the 21st Century. The Colloquy shall be student-directed according to established rules; shall result in United States Constitution Amendment Proposals, World Treaty Proposals, and Philosophy of Science and Technology Definition Statements; and shall conclude each term with deserving students receiving a Linus Pauling Achievement Award honoring the American scientist and peace activist who is one of only two people to have won more than one Nobel Prize in different fields, and the only person to win two undivided Nobel Prizes: the 1954 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research into the nature of the chemical bond and its application to the elucidation of the structure of complex substances and the 1962 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in peace and disarmament campaigns establishing The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
Though the defined curriculum does not offer life sciences courses, such courses can be taken optionally during summer term if offered by a host university. National public high school students shall be limited to attending only at their home host university during the fall-through-spring school year, but can attend at any national public high school host university on a tuition-free basis during summer term. The student shall pay any costs for summer term other than tuition costs, except the United States shall pay all costs if the student is requested to enroll in a particular course or program by the government.
The national public high school shall operate under the aegis of the National Aeronautic and Space Administration with cooperation from the non-military intelligence agencies and from the United States Cyber/Biologic Defense Academy, and with oversight from the Congress. The national public high school shall not answer to local school boards or to the States in any way. The national public high school graduation requirements shall supersede State high school graduation requirements without exception.
Section. 5.
The United States Cyber/Biologic Defense Academy shall have no physical fitness requirements whatsoever. It shall at all times maintain a Stephen Hawking Rule which declares that the mind alone shall determine eligibility and no physical defect of any sort shall be disqualifying. The Cyber/Biologic Defense shall be disciplined and uniformed, but shall not undergo any traditional basic training that includes strenuous whole-body strength-related activities of any sort, including marching. A brilliant wheelchair-bound person is eligible to enroll in the United States Cyber/Biologic Defense Academy and to serve in the Cyber/Biologic Defense at any rank of command, including Chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The term “cyber/biologic” refers to all things related either to transmissions of any sort in cyberspace known and unknown, including any hostile activity on the Internet, any manifestation of computer hacking, and any potentially harmful computer data manipulation, or to hostile biological actions that could be property-damaging, disease-causing, and/or life-threatening in any way, or to both simultaneously in any evil pairing. The term “defense” must naturally have an offensive component to be whole.
The United States Cyber/Biologic Defense Academy shall have access to all national public high school student transcripts and shall be welcome to freely recruit national public high school students.
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Proposal #7: Certain Rights Regarding Obligations and Freedoms
No one’s right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness shall exceed that of another’s all things being equal. No one shall be required to be a hero, act selflessly, or in any way endanger him/herself for another under any circumstance.
Triage decisions and actions are not ever subject to legal consequences, even when mercy killing occurs. In disaster and catastrophe, the Natural Law — the Survival of the Fittest —applies without question.
Chivalry and Good Samaritan acts shall not be legally required of the individual unless they are first expressly required of society as a whole in written law, for mercy cannot be expected where it is not encouraged.
The law altogether describes what society considers “good enough,” and it is there that fairness begins, never to be better or more righteous than that “altogether” measure but always to be at least just as mean, at least in spirit; for consistency — “good enough” — is the right measure of things, even when it is wrong in actual truth.
An unwanted guest cannot be legally expelled in one case but not the other, no matter the circumstance, no matter the eventual outcome, for the divine gift of Eden was the knowledge of good and evil, not life. As is the measure for man so too shall be the measure for woman: no less than that and no more.
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Posted March 11, 2012
Proposal #8: Definitions of Law, Religion, and Judicial Limits
Re: Article. I. Section. 8. and Article. III. Section. 2.
Section. 1.
The minimum context for all judicial considerations of the Constitution in all proceedings in the supreme and inferior Courts shall be one complete and uninterrupted sentence without abridgment or reduction of any sort. A judicial ruling based on either a single clause or a partial sentence that has been disembodied from its whole and complete sentence in the Constitution shall be categorically unconstitutional unless any right consideration of the minimum context will not alter the ruling. Judicial consideration of an underlying Plain Sentence in the Constitution shall be legitimate if the Plain Sentence reduces punctuation in its reordering of all the clauses in the source sentence as it is stated in the Constitution and if the Plain Sentence cannot be disputed according to the long established Rules of Grammar and Sentence Structure for the English language. An indisputable Plain Sentence shall supersede Original Language in establishing the intent of the Constitution.
Section. 2.
The Constitution shall be first and last a Principle: a Philosophy that Guides its Laws, and not ever Laws outside of that context. The Principle of the Constitution shall enlighten, embolden, and encourage the American Premise, which is from The Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” What were once “all men” are now “all people” — specifically, all citizens of the United States of America.
The Principle of the Constitution shall have as its fundamental understanding that as the opposite of Love is not Hate, it is Indifference, the opposite of Life is therefore not Death, it is the lack of Freedom to act according to one’s own Will — and so too for Liberty and so too for the pursuit of Happiness. To be utterly clear: the Right to Life is also the Right to Death, the Right to Liberty is also the Right to Obligation and Commitment, and the Right to pursue Happiness is also the Right to be Sad by one’s own choosing. The Constitution shall possess this as its fundamental understanding regarding all citizens of the United States without exception.
The Principle of the Constitution shall be inseparable from the First Amendment, which shall be elemental and irreducible as one complete thought that in its total provides the essential definition of “religion” for all judicial considerations under the Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Furthermore, “religion” shall be defined according to Webster’s Dictionary as “a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith, “ which shall include an adherence to any aspect of scientific thinking that is speculative, theoretical, and unproven, especially regarding the Origins of the Universe and of Life on Earth.
The Constitution shall premise that everyone has a god and a religion, that “god” is defined by Webster’s Dictionary as “a person or thing of supreme value,” and that religion is how people live their lives in relation to their god. A religion can be entirely personal with no connection whatsoever to a group of fellow believers of any sort or to any creed, tradition, or scripture. A religion does not have to be organized and does not have to use the language or the rituals of the sacred to be a religion, it only must include loyalty to a belief or to a set of beliefs that cannot be proven, and any such beliefs can range helterskelter from unspecific, undefined, and changeable to specific, defined, and unchanging and be held at any depth of emotion and intellect and at any level of certainty; a person’s god can be anyone or anything, including him/herself or his/her favorite possession or pastime. By every accounting of others, a person’s religion can be entirely vacuous, wholly misguided, and without any perceptible merit at all. A religion need not promote personal virtue or in any way serve the common good to be valid and within the constitutional definition. Any judgment of hypocrisy made by others shall be irrelevant, even if it can be rightly proven beyond any doubt in a Court of law.
Religion shall be sacrosanct and inviolable under the law for the individual citizen only, but not for any group, even including the Roman Catholic Church, even including an individual family; no one shall be entitled to definitively decide for another regarding religion, either by defining god or by defining beliefs, except to teach beliefs and to then welcome another to freely join a group that shares those taught beliefs. To the extent that groups are made up of free-thinking individuals, religious groups shall have constitutional rights to liberty and protection, but only to that extent; no religious group as a hierarchy or as an institution or as a tradition and no religious leader of any sort regardless of esteem shall ever have the authority in the United States and its Territories to exercise binding legal jurisdiction over any person or property or to in any way supersede the Constitution.
The United States government shall recognize American patriotism as a religion born in blood and sacrifice and the “sacred Honor” that has been pledged anew by every generation that has since joined Lives and Fortunes with those Founding Fathers who signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Therefore, Congress shall encourage and facilitate the ongoing teaching of comparative religions in the United States public schools beginning in kindergarten so that an abiding sense of the sacred might be instilled in the nation’s citizens.
Section. 3.
The law in the United States shall not be defined by legal precedents made in Court rulings, but shall in every case be defined by the Congress in acts of legislation. The sole duty and obligation of the Courts shall be to rightly settle disputes within the bounds of existing law using only the language of existing law and any Understanding in effect.
A Court ruling shall be final and binding unless an appeal to a higher Court overrules a lower Court, in which case the final and binding ruling becomes that of the higher Court. A final and binding ruling permanently settles a case when no more appeals are possible, and any such ruling thereby potentially creates an Understanding that will remain in effect for one thousand days. An Understanding is any clarification of law formed by a judge, a panel of judges, or a jury to justify a ruling in which the existing law was either vague or nonspecific to the needs of the settled dispute. An Understanding shall prevail in all Courts without exception until either the Congress acts or the Understanding expires. The Congress can legislate the Understanding into law according to the Court ruling or in an alteration of its own making, including the legislating of a new law that is entirely contrary to the Understanding, or it can choose to let the Understanding expire, in which case the law reverts back to its existing vague and nonspecific language.
The Courts, including the Supreme Court, shall judge according to the existing language of the Constitution and its associated laws and according to the Principle of the Constitution, and shall advise the Congress of shortcomings, needs, and inconsistencies in the law through the ruling clarifications that result in Understandings. It is the duty and obligation of the Congress to legislate the laws of the United States.
Past Supreme Court rulings that have effectively created new law by either establishing or building on legal precedents shall be reduced to Understandings on a going-back-two-years-every-year basis, with each Understanding expiring one thousand days after being reduced from its precedent, such that one hundred years of past precedents shall become Understandings during the next fifty years. That process shall continue unabated until no precedents remain in the law of the United States.
Legal precedents shall become nothing more than footnotes in the history of United States jurisprudence; they shall have no remaining force of law within them once the transition required by this amendment is done.
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I will post at least [five] more proposed amendments as I finish them.
Steven A. Sylwester
January 30, 2012
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The following restated and proposed amendments to The Constitution of The United States were written by me without the help of others.
Steven A. Sylwester
January 30, 2012
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RESTATEMENTS OF EXISTING AMENDMENTS:
Amendment II
Plain Sentence: A well-regulated Militia shall not be infringed, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms being necessary to the security of a free State.
Amendment IV
Plain Sentence: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects shall not be violated against unreasonable searches and seizures, and no Warrants shall issue supported by Oath or affirmation but upon probable cause and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Amendment V
Plain Sentence: No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, when in actual service in time of War or public danger unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Amendment VI
Plain Sentence: The accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial in all criminal prosecutions and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.
Amendment VII
Plain Sentence: The right of trial by jury shall be preserved where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars in Suits at common law, and no fact tried by a jury than according to the rules of the common law shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States.
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RESTATED EXISTING CONSTITUTIONAL LANGUAGE PROPOSED AS A NEW AMENDMENT:
The United States Constitution reads: Article II, Section 1. [5] No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; …
Plain Sentence: No person except (either) a natural born Citizen at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution or a Citizen of the United States shall be eligible to the Office of President; …
Simplified Plain Sentence Restatement: No person except a Citizen of the United States shall be eligible to the Office of President; …
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NEW PROPOSED AMENDMENTS:
Proposal #1: Supreme Court Gender Equality
Gender equality shall be guaranteed on the Supreme Court and on the Court of Appeals according to the following:
1. The Congress shall determine an odd number of Justices no fewer than nine who shall together compose the Supreme Court. The total number of Justices shall include one Chief Justice of the United States and the remaining even number of Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, of whom all shall be citizens of the United States.
Of the total number of Associate Justices, half shall be male by legal designation and half shall be female by legal designation.
When vacancies occur, the President shall nominate Justices to the Supreme Court who are then appointed by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate. The Chief Justice shall be appointed for nine years, and shall not be reappointed Chief Justice thereafter. Associate Justices shall be appointed to hold their offices during good behavior. Successive Chief Justices shall alternate between male and female without exception.
The President shall nominate the Chief Justice according to gender from among the Associate Justices, except no person shall be eligible for nomination who would be more than 69 years old at the time of appointment. If no Associate Justice is qualified by age to be appointed the Chief Justice, the President shall appoint any other qualified person.
If an Associate Justice is nominated to be the Chief Justice by the President but fails to be appointed by the Senate, that Associate Justice shall retain the position of Associate Justice. If an Associate Justice becomes the Chief Justice, that Justice shall retire from the Supreme Court when the nine-year appointment as Chief Justice expires.
2. All Court of Appeals en banc courts shall be composed of an even number of Circuit Judges, of whom half shall be male by legal designation and half shall be female by legal designation. Only if the Circuit Chief Judge presides shall an entire en banc court be composed of an odd number of Judges.
3. Upon ratification, the amendment shall be enacted straightforwardly in due time.
All new Associate Justices shall be female until an equal number of male and female Associate Justices are seated on the Supreme Court. Thereafter, all Associate Justice seats will be identified as being either male or female, and will be filled as the need arises according to strict gender distinction without exception.
The current Chief Justice shall complete a nine-year term from the date he was sworn in as Chief Justice, and shall then immediately retire from the Supreme Court and shall be replaced by the first female Chief Justice of the United States. If the current Chief Justice leaves his position for any reason before his term expires, his appointed successor shall be female.
On a district basis, all Court of Appeals appointments shall be female until gender equality is achieved among active Circuit Judges. Thereafter, new appointments shall be made in a manner that maintains gender equality among all active Judges.
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Proposal #2: Universal Health Care
The government shall provide all citizens with free and equal health care, including all tests, treatments, medications, therapies, procedures, surgeries, hospitalizations, and long-term care that:
1) are legal and approved by the government,
2) are done according to government standards by government licensed physicians and practitioners,
3) are not subject to malpractice claims or lawsuits of any sort, and
4) are affordable within an overall government health care program budget that does not exceed 15% of the government’s GDP.
Government licensed physicians and practitioners who work solely within the government health care program shall be exempt from any need for professional malpractice insurance of any sort: they shall be personally immune in all cases from any legal claims or lawsuits that could result from patients who suffer injury, bad outcomes, or death while under their care. However, such physicians and practitioners shall be subject to loss of their license for professional malpractice and/or negligence, and may also be subject to criminal charges, and to their penalties if found guilty.
Personal health insurance and long-term care insurance shall be unnecessary, except to provide desired coverage for experimental care and extraordinary end-of-life care that is not approved by the government program.
The government health care program shall be paid for by two dedicated and approximately equal taxations: a national sales tax (excluding food and energy purchases) and a corporate and personal tax on equity in real property based on government assessed value (excluding hospitals, schools, governments, and approved religious organizations).
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Proposal #3: Multinational Corporations Designated Foreign Nations
Re: Article I Section 8. [3]
All multinational corporations or enterprises, international corporations, transnational corporations, and micro-multinational corporations with management headquarters located in a home country outside of the United States shall be recognized as foreign Nations, and shall be required to contract an Agreement with the United States Congress before selling their goods and services in the United States or its territories.
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Proposal #4: One Percent Ownership of Patents and Copyrights
Re: Article I Section 8. [8]
The United States shall have one percent (1%) ownership of each and every copyright and patent issued and registered by the United States government. The ownership shall be limited to the pre-tax gross revenues generated by any and all uses of that which is protected by U.S. copyright and patent law, and all such ownership shall be without exception. All revenues earned from such ownership shall be used to fund the free public education guaranteed to citizens by law, with all revenues from patents supporting Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics education exclusively and all revenues from copyrights supporting either Arts and Humanities education or Physical Education and Health education exclusively according to the general categories that create the revenues (i.e. computer-related patents support computer science education, music copyrights support music arts education, sporting event copyrights support physical education, and so forth).
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Proposal #5: Water, Sun, and Underground Natural Resources Management
Re: Article. IV. Section. 3. Paragraph. 2.
Section. 1.
The Congress shall have presiding jurisdiction over all public waters in the United States. Public waters shall be all waters:
1) from groundwater springs or from headwaters, snow melt, or runoff that combine to form brooks, creeks, and streams that flow into an ocean or gulf or that become tributaries to rivers that flow into an ocean or gulf;
2) from aquifers accessed or potentially accessed by human-made wells and/or pumping mechanisms; and
3) from lakes of any size and any origin that serve as water sources for any life-sustaining human uses, including fishing and agricultural uses.
The States shall be responsible for all waters of any sort originating in the States until the waters first cross a State boundary or until the waters begin to define the boundary between two States or two nations, at which point the federal government shall become wholly responsible for those waters thereafter.
Section. 2.
Presiding jurisdiction and responsibility shall be to guarantee pure and clean water:
1) that is free from human-made or human-caused pollutants that are toxic or harmful to any living creatures and/or plant life in nature and
2) that is treatable to be made safe for human drinking, cooking, and hygiene in every case, including in the case of pregnant women, except when natural flooding or other polluting disasters occur.
The Congress shall provide remedy if necessary when pollutions occur in public waters and shall legislate the fines and punishments to be levied when municipalities and/or companies are found guilty of polluting. The Congress shall act when new scientific discovery reveals that existing standards are insufficient to protect good health and when new technology invention allows for the affordable improvement of existing standards.
Reckless and/or negligent polluting of public waters shall be a felony, and willful polluting of public waters for profit that causes either human death or at least a yearlong loss of use of a public waters source that had been potable for an established population of more than 5,000 people shall be a capital offense. Corporate executives shall be held personally accountable for any polluting of public waters done by their companies when foreknowledge can be proven.
Section. 3.
Municipal water treatments shall include only those substances and processes that are used solely for water purification purposes. No municipal water treatments of any sort that are intended to be either medicinal or health promoting as additives in human drinking water shall be allowed.
Section. 4.
Nowhere in the United States shall public waters be controlled by a private citizen or by a corporation that is not a municipality. Public access to free drinking water shall be a human right at all times in every municipality in the United States. The legal owner of all public waters shall be the United States of America.
Section. 5.
The Congress shall have presiding jurisdiction over all known and unknown precious metals, minerals, ores, and energy-generating substances and gases that can be mined, drilled for, or otherwise taken from the Earth on the public lands, on the private lands, and in the territorial waters of the United States and its territories.
From public lands and territorial waters, as compensation for being the owner of the land and the ocean or gulf floor and for contracting extraction rights, the United States shall receive five percent (5%) of the pre-tax gross revenues generated from any and all extractions made by mining, drilling, or any other means. Any contracting of extraction rights shall be conditional upon actual work being done, and contracts shall be wholly rescinded if no extractions are made during any 365-day period following the signing of the contract. Extraction rights shall not be given to foreign nations or to companies that do not have their corporate headquarters in the United States.
From private lands, as compensation for being Sovereign and Protector of those lands and of the public roadways, highways, and waterways used for all necessary transporting, the United States shall receive four percent (4%) of the pre-tax gross revenues generated from any and all extractions made by mining, drilling, or any other means. If access to the Earth beneath public lands is made underground from private lands, the United States shall receive five percent (5%) of the pre-tax gross revenues generated from any and all extractions made by mining, drilling, or any other means.
Section. 6.
The United States shall spend all revenues earned from contracting extraction rights on public lands and in territorial waters as needed:
1) on environmental clean-ups that will create and protect pure and clean water;
2) on research to determine effective ways to replenish the depleting aquifers, especially the Ogallala Aquifer; and
3) on public waterworks projects that will enhance and protect the drinking water sources for established municipalities.
The United States shall spend all revenues earned from extractions made from private lands on the Nikola Tesla Project, which shall be a joint project with other cooperating nations to develop clean unlimited energy from the Earth and its higher atmosphere, especially from the ionosphere and the magnetosphere. When it is discovered how to harness controllable atmospheric electricity that can be used as a universal source of nonpolluting industrial power, the technology shall be freely shared among nations as a gift from the Creator to the whole world.
Section. 7.
A national building code shall require architectural design inclusion of dedicated efficient space for photo-voltaic system installations according to industry-established minimum space requirements for all new construction of residential, commercial, and governmental structures enclosing at least 1,000 square feet of heated space.
All existing structures shall be exempt as long as no remodeling involves any structural changes to existing roofs, excluding any structural changes that solely relate to replacing or installing gutters, low profile skylights, vents, satellite dishes, and/or roofing. Any structural additions to existing structures that add or alter roof-lines to accommodate additional square footage shall not be exempt from the code requirements.
Required shall be a minimum of 100 square feet of clear roof surface to accommodate solar modules or panels faced due south at an angle that matches the location’s latitude with an allowable 15- to 20-degree variation east or west from due south. The solar panels shall be located where they will not be shaded by trees or intruded upon by vents, chimneys, or other roof structure penetrations. An efficient accessible routing path from the roof array to a centralized inverter and then to the structure’s load center for the photo-voltaic system’s generated energy shall be required.
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Proposal #6: Public Education
Re: Article. I. Section. 8.
Section. 1.
The Congress shall fund, oversee the administration of, and nominate students to the six tuition-free United States military academies located at: West Point, New York, for the Army; Annapolis, Maryland, for the Navy and the Marine Corps; Colorado Springs, Colorado, for the Air Force; New London, Connecticut, for the Coast Guard; Kings Point, New York, for the Merchant Marine; and Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha, Nebraska, for the Cyber/Biologic Defense.
Section. 2.
The Congress shall require the States to provide thirteen years of tuition-free public education for all United States citizens and all otherwise legal residents from age five through age eighteen. Public education shall be according to three national standards:
1) Every student shall be literate at no less than age-appropriate-grade-level (plus or minus one year) while being actively challenged and fully facilitated to achieve personal potentials in all core academic subjects, including those of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (“literate” being defined as educated, cultured, and lucid within an American social, philosophical, and historical context as taught in a thirteen-year standard curriculum that explores America from 1492 to the current time, with an ability to read, write, and effectively communicate in the English language using current computer technologies);
2) Exceptional students shall be individually advanced to the academic level at which they can succeed while being challenged; and
3) Students whose academic skills competency and knowledge proficiency are measured in the aggregate minimally either two years below or two years above age-appropriate-grade-level shall be designated as Special Education students and shall receive educational funding at twice the normal rate (competency and proficiency testing shall be done when requested by a teacher, parent, or student).
Thirteen years of tuition-free public education shall not be defined by the completion of a thirteen-year standard curriculum that ends in high school graduation in every case. Some lower-tier Special Education students will remain functionally illiterate despite all teaching efforts while some upper-tier Special Education students will graduate from a community college or a public university before their nineteenth birthday and shall thereby receive their college and/or university education on a tuition-free basis.
The term “tuition-free” applies only in the case of public education institutions, including any school designations that encompass any part of the spectrum from kindergarten enrollee through master degree recipient, that is: inclusive from primary school through public university. It does not include graduate studies at the doctoral degree level.
Students who enroll in private schools of any sort shall receive government vouchers that are the equivalent of their local public school tuition if the private schools they enroll in are accredited by the government. Government accreditation of private schools shall only regard standard subjects that are common to local public schools and shall not regard religious subjects of any sort. A homeschool student shall receive government vouchers to rent textbooks and an educational computer hardware and software package if those items have been approved and accredited by the government for homeschool use, if the student is fully registered according to the laws governing homeschool status and is government-approved in that status, and if the total worth of the vouchers for the student does not exceed the local public school tuition cost.
The government vouchers shall pay the vendor or the private school directly in all cases, and in no case shall government vouchers be redeemable for cash by either a student or a student’s parent or legal guardian.
Section. 3.
The Congress shall require the States to identify all exceptional students who are intellectually either moderately-to-highly gifted or exceptionally-to-profoundly gifted by standard academic measures (“moderately-to-highly gifted” being in the top two percent or 98th percentile and “exceptionally-to-profoundly gifted” being in the top one percent or 99th percentile). The United States shall recognize its most gifted citizens — its geniuses — as a natural resource and a national treasure, and shall maximize the potential of that resource and treasure through its public education system in every individual case beginning at the earliest possible opportunity. However, no interventions shall ever be made against the will of the student, regardless of the student’s potential to excel; the Pursuit of Happiness shall stand as an unalienable Right of every individual citizen, even the citizen who is a minor child.
The Congress shall forbid any notion that the purpose of public education is to socialize the citizenry. The purpose of public education shall be to make citizens literate in useful knowledge, confident in factoring new information into old thinking, and competent in self-directed analysis, so that public education might inspire joy and courage in its graduates through the benefits that derive from life-long learning habits, a purposeful informed participation in America’s future, and an enduring appreciation for political dissent and for the American free enterprise system. Public education in the United States shall work to cultivate this flower: that, in every citizen’s life, the gift to America shall be the citizen and the gift to the citizen shall be America.
Section. 4.
The Congress shall establish a national three-year merit-based public high school for the nation’s most intellectually gifted science-minded high school students. The national public high school shall be simultaneously located at no less than 150 public research university campuses nationwide, shall be tuition-free without exception, shall have highly selective enrollment with requirements and standards that cannot be challenged, and shall use the same intensive accelerated-learning curriculum at every site without exception. The defined curriculum shall offer courses in mathematics, computer science, and the physical sciences of chemistry and physics according to standard prerequisite streams, with the high school students enrolling in university classes with university students at times during all three years.
The offered majors shall be limited to:
1) Mathematics through at least Elementary Linear Algebra,
2) Computer Science through at least the standard university sophomore-year computer science sequence course for computer and information science majors that is taken concurrently with the Elements of Discrete Mathematics sequence,
3) Chemistry through the Organic Chemistry sequence and Organic Analysis, and
4) Physics through the standard university sophomore-year physics sequence course for physics majors that covers physics of waves and statistical thermodynamics.
All students shall take the same six Advanced Placement courses: English Language, United States History, United States Government & Politics, and Chemistry during the sophomore year and English Literature and Economics during the junior year. United States History and United States Government & Politics shall be combined as one course. All students shall concurrently take the university calculus sequence and the university calculus-based physics sequence before graduating. There shall be no electives other than choosing a major.
The national public high school capstone shall be a non-graded senior-year-long Colloquy on the topic: Morality, Ethics & Society: Science & Technology in the 21st Century. The Colloquy shall be student-directed according to established rules; shall result in United States Constitution Amendment Proposals, World Treaty Proposals, and Philosophy of Science and Technology Definition Statements; and shall conclude each term with deserving students receiving a Linus Pauling Achievement Award honoring the American scientist and peace activist who is one of only two people to have won more than one Nobel Prize in different fields, and the only person to win two undivided Nobel Prizes: the 1954 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his research into the nature of the chemical bond and its application to the elucidation of the structure of complex substances and the 1962 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in peace and disarmament campaigns establishing The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
Though the defined curriculum does not offer life sciences courses, such courses can be taken optionally during summer term if offered by a host university. National public high school students shall be limited to attending only at their home host university during the fall-through-spring school year, but can attend at any national public high school host university on a tuition-free basis during summer term. The student shall pay any costs for summer term other than tuition costs, except the United States shall pay all costs if the student is requested to enroll in a particular course or program by the government.
The national public high school shall operate under the aegis of the National Aeronautic and Space Administration with cooperation from the non-military intelligence agencies and from the United States Cyber/Biologic Defense Academy, and with oversight from the Congress. The national public high school shall not answer to local school boards or to the States in any way. The national public high school graduation requirements shall supersede State high school graduation requirements without exception.
Section. 5.
The United States Cyber/Biologic Defense Academy shall have no physical fitness requirements whatsoever. It shall at all times maintain a Stephen Hawking Rule which declares that the mind alone shall determine eligibility and no physical defect of any sort shall be disqualifying. The Cyber/Biologic Defense shall be disciplined and uniformed, but shall not undergo any traditional basic training that includes strenuous whole-body strength-related activities of any sort, including marching. A brilliant wheelchair-bound person is eligible to enroll in the United States Cyber/Biologic Defense Academy and to serve in the Cyber/Biologic Defense at any rank of command, including Chairperson of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The term “cyber/biologic” refers to all things related either to transmissions of any sort in cyberspace known and unknown, including any hostile activity on the Internet, any manifestation of computer hacking, and any potentially harmful computer data manipulation, or to hostile biological actions that could be property-damaging, disease-causing, and/or life-threatening in any way, or to both simultaneously in any evil pairing. The term “defense” must naturally have an offensive component to be whole.
The United States Cyber/Biologic Defense Academy shall have access to all national public high school student transcripts and shall be welcome to freely recruit national public high school students.
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Proposal #7: Certain Rights Regarding Obligations and Freedoms
No one’s right to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness shall exceed that of another’s all things being equal. No one shall be required to be a hero, act selflessly, or in any way endanger him/herself for another under any circumstance.
Triage decisions and actions are not ever subject to legal consequences, even when mercy killing occurs. In disaster and catastrophe, the Natural Law — the Survival of the Fittest —applies without question.
Chivalry and Good Samaritan acts shall not be legally required of the individual unless they are first expressly required of society as a whole in written law, for mercy cannot be expected where it is not encouraged.
The law altogether describes what society considers “good enough,” and it is there that fairness begins, never to be better or more righteous than that “altogether” measure but always to be at least just as mean, at least in spirit; for consistency — “good enough” — is the right measure of things, even when it is wrong in actual truth.
An unwanted guest cannot be legally expelled in one case but not the other, no matter the circumstance, no matter the eventual outcome, for the divine gift of Eden was the knowledge of good and evil, not life. As is the measure for man so too shall be the measure for woman: no less than that and no more.
* * *
Posted March 11, 2012
Proposal #8: Definitions of Law, Religion, and Judicial Limits
Re: Article. I. Section. 8. and Article. III. Section. 2.
Section. 1.
The minimum context for all judicial considerations of the Constitution in all proceedings in the supreme and inferior Courts shall be one complete and uninterrupted sentence without abridgment or reduction of any sort. A judicial ruling based on either a single clause or a partial sentence that has been disembodied from its whole and complete sentence in the Constitution shall be categorically unconstitutional unless any right consideration of the minimum context will not alter the ruling. Judicial consideration of an underlying Plain Sentence in the Constitution shall be legitimate if the Plain Sentence reduces punctuation in its reordering of all the clauses in the source sentence as it is stated in the Constitution and if the Plain Sentence cannot be disputed according to the long established Rules of Grammar and Sentence Structure for the English language. An indisputable Plain Sentence shall supersede Original Language in establishing the intent of the Constitution.
Section. 2.
The Constitution shall be first and last a Principle: a Philosophy that Guides its Laws, and not ever Laws outside of that context. The Principle of the Constitution shall enlighten, embolden, and encourage the American Premise, which is from The Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” What were once “all men” are now “all people” — specifically, all citizens of the United States of America.
The Principle of the Constitution shall have as its fundamental understanding that as the opposite of Love is not Hate, it is Indifference, the opposite of Life is therefore not Death, it is the lack of Freedom to act according to one’s own Will — and so too for Liberty and so too for the pursuit of Happiness. To be utterly clear: the Right to Life is also the Right to Death, the Right to Liberty is also the Right to Obligation and Commitment, and the Right to pursue Happiness is also the Right to be Sad by one’s own choosing. The Constitution shall possess this as its fundamental understanding regarding all citizens of the United States without exception.
The Principle of the Constitution shall be inseparable from the First Amendment, which shall be elemental and irreducible as one complete thought that in its total provides the essential definition of “religion” for all judicial considerations under the Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” Furthermore, “religion” shall be defined according to Webster’s Dictionary as “a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith, “ which shall include an adherence to any aspect of scientific thinking that is speculative, theoretical, and unproven, especially regarding the Origins of the Universe and of Life on Earth.
The Constitution shall premise that everyone has a god and a religion, that “god” is defined by Webster’s Dictionary as “a person or thing of supreme value,” and that religion is how people live their lives in relation to their god. A religion can be entirely personal with no connection whatsoever to a group of fellow believers of any sort or to any creed, tradition, or scripture. A religion does not have to be organized and does not have to use the language or the rituals of the sacred to be a religion, it only must include loyalty to a belief or to a set of beliefs that cannot be proven, and any such beliefs can range helterskelter from unspecific, undefined, and changeable to specific, defined, and unchanging and be held at any depth of emotion and intellect and at any level of certainty; a person’s god can be anyone or anything, including him/herself or his/her favorite possession or pastime. By every accounting of others, a person’s religion can be entirely vacuous, wholly misguided, and without any perceptible merit at all. A religion need not promote personal virtue or in any way serve the common good to be valid and within the constitutional definition. Any judgment of hypocrisy made by others shall be irrelevant, even if it can be rightly proven beyond any doubt in a Court of law.
Religion shall be sacrosanct and inviolable under the law for the individual citizen only, but not for any group, even including the Roman Catholic Church, even including an individual family; no one shall be entitled to definitively decide for another regarding religion, either by defining god or by defining beliefs, except to teach beliefs and to then welcome another to freely join a group that shares those taught beliefs. To the extent that groups are made up of free-thinking individuals, religious groups shall have constitutional rights to liberty and protection, but only to that extent; no religious group as a hierarchy or as an institution or as a tradition and no religious leader of any sort regardless of esteem shall ever have the authority in the United States and its Territories to exercise binding legal jurisdiction over any person or property or to in any way supersede the Constitution.
The United States government shall recognize American patriotism as a religion born in blood and sacrifice and the “sacred Honor” that has been pledged anew by every generation that has since joined Lives and Fortunes with those Founding Fathers who signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. Therefore, Congress shall encourage and facilitate the ongoing teaching of comparative religions in the United States public schools beginning in kindergarten so that an abiding sense of the sacred might be instilled in the nation’s citizens.
Section. 3.
The law in the United States shall not be defined by legal precedents made in Court rulings, but shall in every case be defined by the Congress in acts of legislation. The sole duty and obligation of the Courts shall be to rightly settle disputes within the bounds of existing law using only the language of existing law and any Understanding in effect.
A Court ruling shall be final and binding unless an appeal to a higher Court overrules a lower Court, in which case the final and binding ruling becomes that of the higher Court. A final and binding ruling permanently settles a case when no more appeals are possible, and any such ruling thereby potentially creates an Understanding that will remain in effect for one thousand days. An Understanding is any clarification of law formed by a judge, a panel of judges, or a jury to justify a ruling in which the existing law was either vague or nonspecific to the needs of the settled dispute. An Understanding shall prevail in all Courts without exception until either the Congress acts or the Understanding expires. The Congress can legislate the Understanding into law according to the Court ruling or in an alteration of its own making, including the legislating of a new law that is entirely contrary to the Understanding, or it can choose to let the Understanding expire, in which case the law reverts back to its existing vague and nonspecific language.
The Courts, including the Supreme Court, shall judge according to the existing language of the Constitution and its associated laws and according to the Principle of the Constitution, and shall advise the Congress of shortcomings, needs, and inconsistencies in the law through the ruling clarifications that result in Understandings. It is the duty and obligation of the Congress to legislate the laws of the United States.
Past Supreme Court rulings that have effectively created new law by either establishing or building on legal precedents shall be reduced to Understandings on a going-back-two-years-every-year basis, with each Understanding expiring one thousand days after being reduced from its precedent, such that one hundred years of past precedents shall become Understandings during the next fifty years. That process shall continue unabated until no precedents remain in the law of the United States.
Legal precedents shall become nothing more than footnotes in the history of United States jurisprudence; they shall have no remaining force of law within them once the transition required by this amendment is done.
* * *
I will post at least [five] more proposed amendments as I finish them.
Steven A. Sylwester
January 30, 2012
Thursday, January 5, 2012
Water Is Holy
I dedicate the following to my father Robert Alfred Sylwester on the occasion of his 85th birthday today, January 5, 2012.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sylwester
http://www.amazon.com/Robert-Sylwester/e/B001H6MKJA
http://www.corwin.com/authors/517501
(Jesus said) “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Matthew 5:43-48 NIV
Thanks be to God
Divine perfection “as your heavenly Father is perfect” is the stuff of God’s grace; it is unfathomable and inexplicable; it is beyond what is humanly possible. Yet Jesus tells us to be all of that: to love our enemies, to pray for those who persecute us, and to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. What might that look like? In small part, I think it looks like the following: an attempt at grace upon grace.
Steven A. Sylwester
* * *
Water is essential for life — all life of any and every sort. Approximately 60 percent of the substance of a human body is water, and approximately 75 percent of human body waste is water. A healthy human adult consumes approximately 2.5 quarts of water every day. A human can survive for only four or five days without drinking water. Though nearly 75 percent of the Earth's surface is covered with water, 98 percent of that water is salt water, and is not fit for human consumption. It is estimated that less than one percent of all the water on Earth is potentially available for human consumption at any one time.
Many of the facts concerning water are startling and sobering. Consider:
http://www.waterinfo.org/resources/water-facts
http://www.lenntech.com/water-trivia-facts.htm
http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/water_a_vital_nutrient?open
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water
http://chemistry.about.com/cs/howthingswork/f/blbodyelements.htm
All in all, the most precious substance on Earth is potable fresh water — that water which is safe to drink and to use in cooking. Potable fresh water is more valuable than oil or gold or anything else. Yet it is the one substance that is free to all, or should be so. But dangers are ever present. For example, consider the dangers of mercury contamination: http://water.usgs.gov/wid/FS_216-95/FS_216-95.html
http://www1.american.edu/ted/MINAMATA.HTM
http://www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,4570,7-153-10370_12150_12220-26953--,00.html
http://www.nrdc.org/health/effects/mercury/sources.asp
Also, consider the dangers of corporate ownership of water rights and water sources:
http://www.alternativesmagazine.com/49/powdar.html
http://waterindustry.org/Water-Facts/world-water-5.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_privatization
http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/VANOVEDR/
http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/four-ways-to-play-the-global-water-crisis/1275
http://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/nbc-no-deal-between-water-district-poland-spring-now
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/articles/2008/public_ownership_water_fenton.php
What follows is my proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that defines the term “public waters” and guarantees: “The legal owner of all public waters shall be the United States of America.” — that is: We The People.
* * *
The Constitution of The United States:
Article. IV. Section. 3. Paragraph. 2: The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.
Proposed Amendment: Water, Sun, and Underground Natural Resources Management
Re: Article. IV. Section. 3. Paragraph. 2.
Section. 1.
The Congress shall have presiding jurisdiction over all public waters in the United States. Public waters shall be all waters:
1) from groundwater springs or from headwaters, snow melt, or runoff that combine to form brooks, creeks, and streams that flow into an ocean or gulf or that become tributaries to rivers that flow into an ocean or gulf;
2) from aquifers accessed or potentially accessed by human-made wells and/or pumping mechanisms; and
3) from lakes of any size and any origin that serve as water sources for any life-sustaining human uses, including fishing and agricultural uses.
The States shall be responsible for all waters of any sort originating in the States until the waters first cross a State boundary or until the waters begin to define the boundary between two States or two nations, at which point the federal government shall become wholly responsible for those waters thereafter.
Section. 2.
Presiding jurisdiction and responsibility shall be to guarantee pure and clean water:
1) that is free from human-made or human-caused pollutants that are toxic or harmful to any living creatures and/or plant life in nature and
2) that is treatable to be made safe for human drinking, cooking, and hygiene in every case, including in the case of pregnant women, except when natural flooding or other polluting disasters occur.
The Congress shall provide remedy if necessary when pollutions occur in public waters and shall legislate the fines and punishments to be levied when municipalities and/or companies are found guilty of polluting. The Congress shall act when new scientific discovery reveals that existing standards are insufficient to protect good health and when new technology invention allows for the affordable improvement of existing standards.
Reckless and/or negligent polluting of public waters shall be a felony, and willful polluting of public waters for profit that causes either human death or at least a yearlong loss of use of a public waters source that had been potable for an established population of more than 5,000 people shall be a capital offense. Corporate executives shall be held personally accountable for any polluting of public waters done by their companies when foreknowledge can be proven.
Section. 3.
Municipal water treatments shall include only those substances and processes that are used solely for water purification purposes. No municipal water treatments of any sort that are intended to be either medicinal or health promoting as additives in human drinking water shall be allowed.
Section. 4.
Nowhere in the United States shall public waters be controlled by a private citizen or by a corporation that is not a municipality. Public access to free drinking water shall be a human right at all times in every municipality in the United States. The legal owner of all public waters shall be the United States of America.
Section. 5.
The Congress shall have presiding jurisdiction over all known and unknown precious metals, minerals, ores, and energy-generating substances and gases that can be mined, drilled for, or otherwise taken from the Earth on the public lands, on the private lands, and in the territorial waters of the United States and its territories.
From public lands and territorial waters, as compensation for being the owner of the land and the ocean or gulf floor and for contracting extraction rights, the United States shall receive five percent (5%) of the pre-tax gross revenues generated from any and all extractions made by mining, drilling, or any other means. Any contracting of extraction rights shall be conditional upon actual work being done, and contracts shall be wholly rescinded if no extractions are made during any 365-day period following the signing of the contract. Extraction rights shall not be given to foreign nations or to companies that do not have their corporate headquarters in the United States.
From private lands, as compensation for being Sovereign and Protector of those lands and of the public roadways, highways, and waterways used for all necessary transporting, the United States shall receive four percent (4%) of the pre-tax gross revenues generated from any and all extractions made by mining, drilling, or any other means. If access to the Earth beneath public lands is made underground from private lands, the United States shall receive five percent (5%) of the pre-tax gross revenues generated from any and all extractions made by mining, drilling, or any other means.
Section. 6.
The United States shall spend all revenues earned from contracting extraction rights on public lands and in territorial waters as needed:
1) on environmental clean-ups that will create and protect pure and clean water;
2) on research to determine effective ways to replenish the depleting aquifers, especially the Ogallala Aquifer; and
3) on public waterworks projects that will enhance and protect the drinking water sources for established municipalities.
The United States shall spend all revenues earned from extractions made from private lands on the Nikola Tesla Project, which shall be a joint project with other cooperating nations to develop clean unlimited energy from the Earth and its higher atmosphere, especially from the ionosphere and the magnetosphere. When it is discovered how to harness controllable atmospheric electricity that can be used as a universal source of nonpolluting industrial power, the technology shall be freely shared among nations as a gift from the Creator to the whole world.
Section. 7.
A national building code shall require architectural design inclusion of dedicated efficient space for photo-voltaic system installations according to industry-established minimum space requirements for all new construction of residential, commercial, and governmental structures enclosing at least 1,000 square feet of heated space.
All existing structures shall be exempt as long as no remodeling involves any structural changes to existing roofs, excluding any structural changes that solely relate to replacing or installing gutters, low profile skylights, vents, satellite dishes, and/or roofing. Any structural additions to existing structures that add or alter roof-lines to accommodate additional square footage shall not be exempt from the code requirements.
Required shall be a minimum of 100 square feet of clear roof surface to accommodate solar modules or panels faced due south at an angle that matches the location’s latitude with an allowable 15- to 20-degree variation east or west from due south. The solar panels shall be located where they will not be shaded by trees or intruded upon by vents, chimneys, or other roof structure penetrations. An efficient accessible routing path from the roof array to a centralized inverter and then to the structure’s load center for the photo-voltaic system’s generated energy shall be required.
* * *
COMMENTARY:
Water is holy. As such, it should be sacred.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sylwester
http://www.amazon.com/Robert-Sylwester/e/B001H6MKJA
http://www.corwin.com/authors/517501
(Jesus said) “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
Matthew 5:43-48 NIV
Thanks be to God
Divine perfection “as your heavenly Father is perfect” is the stuff of God’s grace; it is unfathomable and inexplicable; it is beyond what is humanly possible. Yet Jesus tells us to be all of that: to love our enemies, to pray for those who persecute us, and to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. What might that look like? In small part, I think it looks like the following: an attempt at grace upon grace.
Steven A. Sylwester
* * *
Water is essential for life — all life of any and every sort. Approximately 60 percent of the substance of a human body is water, and approximately 75 percent of human body waste is water. A healthy human adult consumes approximately 2.5 quarts of water every day. A human can survive for only four or five days without drinking water. Though nearly 75 percent of the Earth's surface is covered with water, 98 percent of that water is salt water, and is not fit for human consumption. It is estimated that less than one percent of all the water on Earth is potentially available for human consumption at any one time.
Many of the facts concerning water are startling and sobering. Consider:
http://www.waterinfo.org/resources/water-facts
http://www.lenntech.com/water-trivia-facts.htm
http://www.betterhealth.vic.gov.au/bhcv2/bhcarticles.nsf/pages/water_a_vital_nutrient?open
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water
http://chemistry.about.com/cs/howthingswork/f/blbodyelements.htm
All in all, the most precious substance on Earth is potable fresh water — that water which is safe to drink and to use in cooking. Potable fresh water is more valuable than oil or gold or anything else. Yet it is the one substance that is free to all, or should be so. But dangers are ever present. For example, consider the dangers of mercury contamination: http://water.usgs.gov/wid/FS_216-95/FS_216-95.html
http://www1.american.edu/ted/MINAMATA.HTM
http://www.michigan.gov/dnr/0,4570,7-153-10370_12150_12220-26953--,00.html
http://www.nrdc.org/health/effects/mercury/sources.asp
Also, consider the dangers of corporate ownership of water rights and water sources:
http://www.alternativesmagazine.com/49/powdar.html
http://waterindustry.org/Water-Facts/world-water-5.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_privatization
http://academic.evergreen.edu/g/grossmaz/VANOVEDR/
http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/four-ways-to-play-the-global-water-crisis/1275
http://www.stopcorporateabuse.org/nbc-no-deal-between-water-district-poland-spring-now
http://reclaimdemocracy.org/articles/2008/public_ownership_water_fenton.php
What follows is my proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that defines the term “public waters” and guarantees: “The legal owner of all public waters shall be the United States of America.” — that is: We The People.
* * *
The Constitution of The United States:
Article. IV. Section. 3. Paragraph. 2: The Congress shall have Power to dispose of and make all needful Rules and Regulations respecting the Territory or other Property belonging to the United States; and nothing in this Constitution shall be so construed as to Prejudice any Claims of the United States, or of any particular State.
Proposed Amendment: Water, Sun, and Underground Natural Resources Management
Re: Article. IV. Section. 3. Paragraph. 2.
Section. 1.
The Congress shall have presiding jurisdiction over all public waters in the United States. Public waters shall be all waters:
1) from groundwater springs or from headwaters, snow melt, or runoff that combine to form brooks, creeks, and streams that flow into an ocean or gulf or that become tributaries to rivers that flow into an ocean or gulf;
2) from aquifers accessed or potentially accessed by human-made wells and/or pumping mechanisms; and
3) from lakes of any size and any origin that serve as water sources for any life-sustaining human uses, including fishing and agricultural uses.
The States shall be responsible for all waters of any sort originating in the States until the waters first cross a State boundary or until the waters begin to define the boundary between two States or two nations, at which point the federal government shall become wholly responsible for those waters thereafter.
Section. 2.
Presiding jurisdiction and responsibility shall be to guarantee pure and clean water:
1) that is free from human-made or human-caused pollutants that are toxic or harmful to any living creatures and/or plant life in nature and
2) that is treatable to be made safe for human drinking, cooking, and hygiene in every case, including in the case of pregnant women, except when natural flooding or other polluting disasters occur.
The Congress shall provide remedy if necessary when pollutions occur in public waters and shall legislate the fines and punishments to be levied when municipalities and/or companies are found guilty of polluting. The Congress shall act when new scientific discovery reveals that existing standards are insufficient to protect good health and when new technology invention allows for the affordable improvement of existing standards.
Reckless and/or negligent polluting of public waters shall be a felony, and willful polluting of public waters for profit that causes either human death or at least a yearlong loss of use of a public waters source that had been potable for an established population of more than 5,000 people shall be a capital offense. Corporate executives shall be held personally accountable for any polluting of public waters done by their companies when foreknowledge can be proven.
Section. 3.
Municipal water treatments shall include only those substances and processes that are used solely for water purification purposes. No municipal water treatments of any sort that are intended to be either medicinal or health promoting as additives in human drinking water shall be allowed.
Section. 4.
Nowhere in the United States shall public waters be controlled by a private citizen or by a corporation that is not a municipality. Public access to free drinking water shall be a human right at all times in every municipality in the United States. The legal owner of all public waters shall be the United States of America.
Section. 5.
The Congress shall have presiding jurisdiction over all known and unknown precious metals, minerals, ores, and energy-generating substances and gases that can be mined, drilled for, or otherwise taken from the Earth on the public lands, on the private lands, and in the territorial waters of the United States and its territories.
From public lands and territorial waters, as compensation for being the owner of the land and the ocean or gulf floor and for contracting extraction rights, the United States shall receive five percent (5%) of the pre-tax gross revenues generated from any and all extractions made by mining, drilling, or any other means. Any contracting of extraction rights shall be conditional upon actual work being done, and contracts shall be wholly rescinded if no extractions are made during any 365-day period following the signing of the contract. Extraction rights shall not be given to foreign nations or to companies that do not have their corporate headquarters in the United States.
From private lands, as compensation for being Sovereign and Protector of those lands and of the public roadways, highways, and waterways used for all necessary transporting, the United States shall receive four percent (4%) of the pre-tax gross revenues generated from any and all extractions made by mining, drilling, or any other means. If access to the Earth beneath public lands is made underground from private lands, the United States shall receive five percent (5%) of the pre-tax gross revenues generated from any and all extractions made by mining, drilling, or any other means.
Section. 6.
The United States shall spend all revenues earned from contracting extraction rights on public lands and in territorial waters as needed:
1) on environmental clean-ups that will create and protect pure and clean water;
2) on research to determine effective ways to replenish the depleting aquifers, especially the Ogallala Aquifer; and
3) on public waterworks projects that will enhance and protect the drinking water sources for established municipalities.
The United States shall spend all revenues earned from extractions made from private lands on the Nikola Tesla Project, which shall be a joint project with other cooperating nations to develop clean unlimited energy from the Earth and its higher atmosphere, especially from the ionosphere and the magnetosphere. When it is discovered how to harness controllable atmospheric electricity that can be used as a universal source of nonpolluting industrial power, the technology shall be freely shared among nations as a gift from the Creator to the whole world.
Section. 7.
A national building code shall require architectural design inclusion of dedicated efficient space for photo-voltaic system installations according to industry-established minimum space requirements for all new construction of residential, commercial, and governmental structures enclosing at least 1,000 square feet of heated space.
All existing structures shall be exempt as long as no remodeling involves any structural changes to existing roofs, excluding any structural changes that solely relate to replacing or installing gutters, low profile skylights, vents, satellite dishes, and/or roofing. Any structural additions to existing structures that add or alter roof-lines to accommodate additional square footage shall not be exempt from the code requirements.
Required shall be a minimum of 100 square feet of clear roof surface to accommodate solar modules or panels faced due south at an angle that matches the location’s latitude with an allowable 15- to 20-degree variation east or west from due south. The solar panels shall be located where they will not be shaded by trees or intruded upon by vents, chimneys, or other roof structure penetrations. An efficient accessible routing path from the roof array to a centralized inverter and then to the structure’s load center for the photo-voltaic system’s generated energy shall be required.
* * *
COMMENTARY:
Water is holy. As such, it should be sacred.
Monday, December 12, 2011
This Deserves a MacArthur Genius Award
This web address can also be accessed at: bit.ly/v48deL
* * *
I dedicate the following to my mother Ruth Eileen Maier Sylwester on the occasion of her 79th birthday today, December 12, 2011. I am the second oldest of her eight children, the seven who made it into this life and the one who did not. Though I was born from her without a left hand on June 12, 1954, she has always been my friend when I needed a friend, and I love her dearly. During her time as the stay-at-home mother of six boys and one girl, and then again later during her professional career as a public school librarian (a career she interrupted for awhile to be her own boss as the owner and operator of a university campus bookstore), she was often cantankerous and combative with her strong opinions on things, and she thereby demonstrated to me that one should think and do according to what ought to be thought and done, not according to convention or majority vote, no matter the consequence.
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
1 Corinthians 13:12 KJV
Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
John 8:31-32 NIV
Thanks be to God
Steven A. Sylwester
* * *
In the following, I propose two amendments to the United States Constitution: Amendment XXVIII (28): Identifying Certain Corporations as Foreign Nations, and Amendment XXIX (29): U.S. 1% Ownership of Protected Intellectual Property. Currently, the U.S. Constitution has twenty-seven ratified amendments, and the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, which guarantees Suffrage for Eighteen-Year-Olds, was proposed on March 23, 1971, and ratified 100 days later on July 1, 1971. Change can happen very quickly.
I have earlier proposed two other amendments to the U.S. Constitution, one guarantees Supreme Court Gender Equality and the other guarantees Universal Health Care. Like the two amendments I propose in the following, my proposed Universal Health Care amendment is a money issue that is at its heart a national security issue. My arguments in favor of my proposed Universal Health Care amendment can be read at here and here. But please read the following first.
* * *
The United States government needs money. The following two proposed amendments to the U.S. Constitution would create an enormous perpetual revenue stream and would do so reasonably and fairly in legitimate ways that are easily justifiable to even the most ardently conservative capitalist. Simply, goods and services deserve fair compensation, and that end is what is being accomplished in what I propose.
The world has changed since September 17, 1787, when the signing of the Constitution took place in Philadelphia. Then, America was mostly self-contained and mostly self-reliant in every way that mattered. Then, businesses sold their goods and services locally or regionally, very rarely nationally, and almost never internationally. Then, American businesses served America and cared about America, because America was where they profited. Today, America exists in a global economy that barely recognizes national boundaries and the sovereignty of nations, a global economy in which corporate business interests are no longer defined by any sort of national loyalty. The consequence of this remarkable embrace of the global marketplace by multinational corporations is nothing short of an all-out economic attack on America, and the national security interests of America have certainly been compromised in the outcomes.
The world has been engaged in an Economic World War for many years now, though the U.S. government publicly ignores that war at every turn. Unfortunately, America is now in a situation so dire that we are at risk of perishing as a nation unless we quickly wake up to the power shifts that are occurring at the heart of the new global economy. Enacting the following amendments would stem the tide of the Economic World War in the same manner that the D-Day Invasion stemmed the tide of World War Two. The war would not be over, but a mainland beachhead would be established from which the remaining battles could be supplied and reinforced. Victory was not made assured on D-Day, but it was made possible. As it is now in the Economic World War, the stark realities are all working against the U.S., and victory seems impossible. To make victory possible again would be to restore the hope that is the very promise of the American ideal: that the best days are still to come, that greatness is our children’s destiny.
In any search for a war strategy, a nation must first make an honest assessment of its best assets with a keen eye toward finding the weaknesses and holes. America is an implausible miracle of history, something best described with the Biblical phrase “in the fullness of time” — as if a greater purpose was at stake. What held America together at its forming revolution, and then during its Civil War, and still now in 2011 are mere words on paper: a Declaration of Independence and a United States Constitution. And so I searched the U.S. Constitution for its weaknesses and holes, and I found the following:
The Constitution Of The United States:
Article I Section 8. [1] The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; …
[3] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes; …
[8] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; …
[18] To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
The following amendments to the U.S. Constitution should be placed into those found weaknesses and holes as strategic reinforcements in our nation’s effort to turn the tide in the Economic World War.
Proposed Amendment XXVIII
Re: Article I Section 8. [3]
All multinational corporations or enterprises, international corporations, transnational corporations, and micro-multinational corporations with management headquarters located in a home country outside of the United States shall be recognized as foreign Nations, and shall be required to contract an Agreement with the United States Congress before selling their goods and services in the United States or its territories.
Proposed Amendment XXIX
Re: Article I Section 8. [8]
The United States shall have one percent (1%) ownership of each and every copyright and patent issued and registered by the United States government. The ownership shall be limited to the pre-tax gross revenues generated by any and all uses of that which is protected by U.S. copyright and patent law, and all such ownership shall be without exception. All revenues earned from such ownership shall be used to fund the free public education guaranteed to citizens by law, with all revenues from patents supporting Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics education exclusively and all revenues from copyrights supporting either Arts and Humanities education or Physical Education and Health education exclusively according to the general categories that create the revenues (i.e. computer-related patents support computer science education, music copyrights support music arts education, sporting event copyrights support physical education, and so forth).
COMMENTARY
The best solution to a problem is often the simplest solution that is the most obvious solution. Both of my proposed amendments are solutions of that sort.
A wise person gains leverage in a negotiation by shrewdly bargaining his/her most valuable asset both first and last. Always, the most valuable asset is made the end prize, and it is never given away cheaply. Rather, it is that which is purchased — the Biblical “pearl of great price” (Matt. 13:45-46) for which one would sell everything he/she owns.
The United States Congress owns the constitutional right “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations,” which means: to control access to the biggest, richest, most powerful economy in the world. Yet Congress routinely forfeits that right to the legal shenanigans of multinational corporations of every stripe, and it does so without a fight. Simply, we have allowed our senators and representatives in Congress to become saps, wimps, chumps, and dupes. Multinational corporations must look upon Americans as morons and prostitutes, because we are so easily made to heel. Quite literally, Congress has given away the store — the American people — to unfriendly powers that are intent on usurping control over the American marketplace. It is an outrage that must stop.
My proposed Amendment XXVIII (28) would dramatically change the world overnight, and then more and more so every day thereafter. The final outcome after the necessary transition would find America richer, stronger, and more economically vibrant than ever before. And every multinational corporation in the world would be humbled as a result.
“All multinational corporations or enterprises, international corporations, transnational corporations, and micro-multinational corporations … recognized as foreign Nations” by the amendment would surely fight against the amendment’s ratification with tremendous resources and all-out zeal, and would threaten terrible consequences if ratification ever occurred. But all of those corporations would quickly line up to “contract an Agreement with the United States Congress” following the amendment’s ratification, because maintaining a presence in the American marketplace is worth vastly more than whatever loss of profits might be suffered in the agreement. That is the truth. That is the gamble.
Understand this: every multinational corporation of any sort that had its management headquarters located in the United States would not be recognized as a foreign Nation, and would not “be required to contract an Agreement with the United States Congress before selling their goods and services in the United States or its territories.” Those corporations would identify the United States as their “home country” and could rightly identify themselves as American, and they would benefit from that distinction.
The first expected outcome from ratification of my proposed amendment is that more multinational corporations would choose to become American. In doing so, they could no longer dodge U.S. corporate taxes in any way, and U.S. tax revenues would therefore increase substantially. More importantly, the first expected outcome could result in more national loyalty from those corporations that choose to be American, and the national security interests of the United States would certainly be served by that increased loyalty.
The second expected outcome from ratification is that many jobs would be created for American workers, both by those corporations choosing to be American and by those corporations “required to contract an Agreement with the United States Congress before selling their goods and services in the United States or its territories.” Contract incentives rewarding the creation of permanent American jobs that are not tax subsidized would be a big part of the Agreement proposal presented by Congress to “foreign Nation” corporations. The Agreement would offer several choices, but creating permanent jobs for American workers would be clearly the advantaged choice for most corporations.
The third expected outcome follows the first two, but would supersede both in importance if Congress lived up to its oath of office, that third expected outcome being: Congress would designate select American publicly-traded corporations as U.S. National Security Corporations, and would grant those corporations extraordinary stock market protections on an ongoing basis in order to protect U.S. national security interests at all times. For example, those corporations could have their stock protected by law from all short selling, options trading, and programmed trading that is manipulative and/or hostile. Also, the legal protections could require all foreigners who own those stocks to first register with the U.S. government and then hold their stock in U.S. National Security Corporations in accounts that could be immediately and permanently frozen without recourse by the U.S. government at any time of national emergency.
The fact is: America must minimally have at all times the functioning manufacturing base that is necessary to quickly arm and defend itself in times of war, and that includes textile manufacturing for military uniforms and supplies, and every other kind of essential manufacturing that we have already allowed multinational corporations to send to China and India and other foreign countries where cheaper labor is available. America has been terribly irresponsible in creating our current predicament, and so our federal government must now be heroic in restoring our national security at every level of American society.
Know this: U.S. National Security Corporations would be prized buy-and-hold investment stocks, because those stocks would be largely immune to market gyrations due to their Congress-favored protections. Quite simply, those stocks alone could restore public trust in the U.S. stock markets, and that restored stability is desperately needed now. Frankly, to buy stock in a U.S. National Security Corporation would be to make a long-term investment in America’s future; it would be patriotic. Though no specific investment return could be guaranteed, and though the investment returns would likely be modest in most cases, it would be a near-certainty that such investments would be reliably profitable over time.
Remember, a U.S. National Security Corporation would have the U.S. government as a guaranteed customer. If the U.S. government will not commit to buying American-made products, why should its citizens? The change in national self-awareness thinking that leads to self-interest buying practices has to start with “We The People” together.
Yes, we can. Yes, we should.
For clarity regarding my proposed Amendment XXVIII (28), consider the direct parallel it has to the illegal alien issue that plagues U.S. immigration policy, especially in light of the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are people in the eyes of the law. What should the U.S. government do about an estimated 11 million people who are living in our country illegally? Deportation seems harsh in many individual cases, though to ever grant amnesty to illegal immigration practices is to reward and encourage lawlessness. So too with the U.S. government response to multinational corporations that choose to locate their home country in a foreign land in order to dodge U.S. corporate taxes: we have become gutless to act in our own long-term self-interest. Why should any multinational corporation choose to have its headquarters in America when the U.S. government does not grant it any exclusive rights and privileges in our nation’s marketplace for doing so? The illegal-alien-equivalent multinational corporation is actually given an advantage when it sells its goods and services in America, because it avoids U.S. corporate taxes without penalty, and even without any obligation to ever just pay the difference in some meaningful way. It is an outrage that must stop, and my proposed amendment would stop it all immediately.
Having the United States Congress reclaim its ownership of the constitutional right “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations” under the definitions provided by my proposed amendment is the first step to restoring America as the world’s preeminent great nation. The second step that follows is equally monumental.
The United States Congress owns the constitutional right “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries,” which means: to create and enforce legal protections of intellectual property rights in the forms of registered copyrights and registered patents, and to resolve disputes over such matters through the workings of the U.S. Courts, including the Supreme Court of The United States if necessary. Yet the United States pays itself very meagerly for creating and enforcing such guaranteed legal protections as are derived from U.S. issued copyrights and patents — essentially, no more than very reasonable one-time registration processing fees for legal protections that the U.S. government will guarantee for decades.
What a deal, especially now — more than 224 years after the ink dried at the signing of the Constitution. Compare the technologies of the day in September 1787 to the technologies of the day today in December 2011. Just ponder this: Benjamin Franklin first proved that lightning is electricity when he flew his kite in a storm in 1752, and then invented lightning rods. The electric telegraph was invented in 1787. A whole lot has happened since. Back in 1787, music copyrights only protected against the piracy of printed sheet music, because there were no recording devices then and no broadcast mediums other than live-performance. And back in 1787, printing presses were laborious sheet-fed hand-operated machines, so printing hundreds of copies of something was printing a lot. Today, music copyrights protect against even the piracy that occurs when file sharing downloads happen in the virtual world of the Internet, and in every other imaginable case, too.
So what is fair compensation for the protections granted to intellectual property rights by U.S. copyright and patent law? Is the one-time cost of a registration filing fee fair compensation to the U.S. government for providing a lifetime-plus-50-years copyright protection that is fully guaranteed by the U.S. judicial system? Is the U.S. government being fairly compensated for the patents it protects? These are difficult questions, but mostly because maintaining a past practice always seems fair at first consideration, as in: “We have always done it this way, so why change it now?” Well, now is now, and it is way past time for a change. My claim is: U.S. government guaranteed goods and services deserve a fair compensation. The necessary justification for my proposed Amendment XXIX (29) is as simple as that.
Who pays the one percent (1%)? Understand this: “The United States shall have one percent (1%) ownership of each and every copyright and patent issued and registered by the United States government” means the U.S. automatically gets its share — it actually becomes the full owner of something — whenever a copyright or patent is issued and registered by the U.S. government, and that “something” is a 1% share of whatever is being protected. Furthermore, “The ownership shall be limited to the pre-tax gross revenues generated by any and all uses of that which is protected by U.S. copyright and patent law” means that the U.S. share does not ever first exist as taxable income for any other owner of a copyright or patent — the U.S. share is paid directly from the gross revenues to the U.S. as its share, as if the U.S. were a principal partner in a business venture. A failure to give the U.S. its rightful share of the gross revenues would be fraud and would have serious legal consequences according to both contract and criminal law.
But Know This: No one is obligated, compelled, or coerced to ever get a U.S. copyright or a U.S. patent except by a personal desire to protect their own self-interest in the best way possible to their greatest advantage. According to my proposed amendment, the cost of that protection should be granting 1% ownership to the United States of that which is being protected. If that cost is too high, then whoever created or invented a piece of intellectual property can choose of their own free will to leave that property unprotected in the American marketplace. In that case, the intellectual property could be stolen outright by someone else and reproduced for profit, and the original creator or inventor could possibly have no legal recourse whatsoever if that which was stolen was not a physical object of some sort. That means an intellectual property thief could legally buy an unprotected product, then reverse engineer it, and then manufacture and sell it for profit — and do so legally without any risk of penalty. That is the risk. That is the possible loss and forfeiture suffered by choosing to not grant the United States a 1% ownership as fair compensation for U.S. government protection of intellectual property rights in the form of a U.S. copyright or a U.S. patent.
It is important to know that there are no exceptions, even U.S. copyrights and U.S. patents held by foreigners, including foreign corporations, are subject to the requirement of granting 1% ownership to the United States. If an issued and registered U.S. copyright or U.S. patent is sold from one person/corporation to another in part or in whole, the United States still maintains its 1% ownership without change. In fact, the United States cannot sell, forfeit, or cancel its 1% ownership under any circumstance, because the United States is We The People.
The school funding portion of the proposed amendment is based in the fundamental aspect of a Biblical tithe, in that a blessing has its source. My contentions are these: 1) American education contributes to American success; 2) American schools foster American creativity; 3) American teachers deserve the opportunity to do their best work with the best resources available; 4) saying “thank you” never hurt anyone, and sometimes those words inspire greatness; and 5) my formula for revenue distribution can be trusted to withstand bureaucratic tampering. The spiritual guidance of “being blessed to be a blessing” applies — of giving back by passing forward the gift.
Not every creator and not every inventor is so spiritual and giving as I suggest, and many such people certainly hated school with every fiber of their being. Even so … even so … I too hated school. But hope must spring eternal in this one respect, despite all. Why? By my observation, we have thus far proven ourselves to be failures as a nation regarding the funding and the purpose of public education, and what I propose might be our last best chance to get it right. That is an arrogant statement, but it is wholly correct nonetheless. America simply must put public education as its highest priority if it wants to maintain itself as a great nation.
The principal awareness — the guiding light — must be this: America’s greatest natural and national resources — indeed, the very treasure of the land — are its best and brightest students, its young geniuses, those whose potentials are truly surpassing. No gold mine, no oil field, and no vastness of untapped mineral deposit compares in value to the potentials of our best young minds. Yet we throw those potentials to the feckless winds of fate as if the seeds can be counted on to sprout of their own accord no matter where they might land.
The public school funding that would be accomplished by my proposed Amendment XXIX (29), is enormous and staggering — almost beyond measure. Remember, the United States would claim one percent (1%) ownership of annual revenue numbers like these:
Dedicated to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education:
U.S. prescription sales (2008) = $291 billion
Source: http://www.imshealth.com/portal/site/imshealth/menuitem.a46c6d4df3db4b3d88f611019418c22a/?vgnextoid=078ce5b87da10210VgnVCM100000ed152ca2RCRD&vgnextchannel=41a67900b55a5110VgnVCM10000071812ca2RCRD&vgnextfmt=default
U.S. computer software industry (2010) = $240 billion
Source: http://www.hoovers.com/industry/computer-software/1121-1.html
U.S. computer hardware market (2008) = $60.6 billion
Source: http://expresatec.net/computer-hardware-united-states-industry-guide-aarkstore-enterprise-market-reserach-report/
U.S. chemicals industry (2010) = $700 billion
Source: http://www.hoovers.com/industry/chemical-manufacturing/1085-1.html
Do the math: Already almost $1.3 trillion x 1% = $13 billion
In 2007-08, there were 132,656 elementary and secondary schools in the United States (K-12 in total), 98,916 that were public schools and 33,740 that were private schools.
Source: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d10/tables/dt10_005.asp
Rough math: $13 billion / 100,000 public schools = $130,000 per school per year for STEM education only … and we are still counting! Just consider annual mobile phone sales; and home appliance and TV sales; and automobile and truck sales; and heavy equipment sales; and military defense contract sales; and patented seed sales; and medical devices sales; and medical diagnostic equipment and surgery supply sales; and recreational vehicle, equipment, and gun sales; and … Consider that the 2010 revenues at Boeing Co. totaled $64.3 billion, and probably ever dollar of that was directly related to sales of patented products. Source: http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/earnings/earnings.asp?ticker=BA:US
Certainly, the per school per year funding for STEM education only will approximate at least $260,000, which will pay for five teacher salaries averaging $52,000 per year.
But those “rough math” numbers go into the stratosphere when appropriate factoring is done. For example, I will use my local public school district (Eugene School District 4J in Oregon) as a general case model. 4J has two “K-5” (6-year) elementary schools feed into one “6-8” (3-year) middle school, and two “6-8” (3-year) middle schools feed into one “9-12” (4-year) high school. Therefore, the elementary schools and the middle schools in 4J are weighted equivalents when “per student per year” factoring is done. That is: a 375-student 6-year elementary school (62.5 students per grade) equals a 375-student 3-year (125 students per grade) middle school, when the basic unit is a school. But a 1000-student 4-year (250 students per grade) high school is different. Doing the math using the 4J model to establish weighted equivalent factors finds that each elementary and middle school has a 0.723 factor and each high school has a 2.666 factor when weighted school allotments are calculated.
Therefore, if $260,000 is the per school K-12 non-weighted allotment dedicated solely to STEM education, then the weighted allotments according to the previous paragraph’s math approximate to $187,833 for each elementary and middle school and $693,000 for each high school. At the high school level, that equals eleven teaching positions dedicated solely to STEM education paying an average salary of $63,000 per year.
For various reasons, I would choose a weighted per school allotment on a national elementary/middle/high-school averaging with perhaps two distinct levels (rural/town and urban/city) over a strict per student allotment. I think “weighted per school” allotments would encourage schools of a certain size if it was done wisely, and schools of a certain size are generally thought to be better.
Also, I would allow for “banking of 10%” for up to five years to fund building improvement projects related to a particular category. For example, STEM allotments that were banked could pay for the construction or upgrading of science laboratories at our public high schools. In the 4J example, $693,000 x 10% = $69,300, and $69,300 x 5 = $346,500. I think a very fine science laboratory could be built and equipped for $346,500.
The money for public education funding generated by my proposed Amendment XXIX (29) from U.S. copyrights is not as great as that from U.S. patents in my estimation, but the amounts are still staggering. Consider these numbers:
U.S. Video Game Industry (2010) = $18.58 billion
U.S. Music Industry (2008) = $10.4 billion
U.S. Movie Industry (2010) = $10.57 billion
U.S. Book Industry (2007) = $35.69 billion
U.S. DVD Industry (recent) = $23 billion
Sources: http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Video_game_industry
http://boxofficemojo.com/yearly/
Those numbers add up to $98.24 billion, which means a $982.4 million yearly funding for U.S. public schools if my proposed amendment were ratified.
In the realm of Arts and Humanities funding, school districts might choose to hire a specialist teacher that might be shared by several schools (for example, a band teacher). Or it could happen that the nation would elect to spend a certain portion of the funding to create Internet-based learning experiences that could be used by anyone, including homeschoolers and students who attend private schools. I think it would be wise to fund K-12 Internet-based learning experiences wherever that is reasonably possible.
Consider every bit of rerun TV programming is generating copyright-protected revenues, and so too is every TV broadcast of sporting event, including college sports, professional sports, and the Olympics, and those TV sports broadcasting contracts are enormous!
Think it all through, and do not be stupid in your thinking.
My proposal exclusively funds K-12 free public education. However, if citizens wisely kept current school-supporting taxations in place, much of those public tax monies could be redirected from funding K-12 education to funding public community college and public university education, meaning current college and university tuitions could be slashed. The implications and ramifications and outcomes and surprises hidden in my proposed Amendment XXIX (29) are enormous, and the justifications for doing what I propose are wholly fair and reasonable.
God bless America.
Steven A. Sylwester
December 12, 2011
* * *
I dedicate the following to my mother Ruth Eileen Maier Sylwester on the occasion of her 79th birthday today, December 12, 2011. I am the second oldest of her eight children, the seven who made it into this life and the one who did not. Though I was born from her without a left hand on June 12, 1954, she has always been my friend when I needed a friend, and I love her dearly. During her time as the stay-at-home mother of six boys and one girl, and then again later during her professional career as a public school librarian (a career she interrupted for awhile to be her own boss as the owner and operator of a university campus bookstore), she was often cantankerous and combative with her strong opinions on things, and she thereby demonstrated to me that one should think and do according to what ought to be thought and done, not according to convention or majority vote, no matter the consequence.
For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
1 Corinthians 13:12 KJV
Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”
John 8:31-32 NIV
Thanks be to God
Steven A. Sylwester
* * *
In the following, I propose two amendments to the United States Constitution: Amendment XXVIII (28): Identifying Certain Corporations as Foreign Nations, and Amendment XXIX (29): U.S. 1% Ownership of Protected Intellectual Property. Currently, the U.S. Constitution has twenty-seven ratified amendments, and the Twenty-Sixth Amendment, which guarantees Suffrage for Eighteen-Year-Olds, was proposed on March 23, 1971, and ratified 100 days later on July 1, 1971. Change can happen very quickly.
I have earlier proposed two other amendments to the U.S. Constitution, one guarantees Supreme Court Gender Equality and the other guarantees Universal Health Care. Like the two amendments I propose in the following, my proposed Universal Health Care amendment is a money issue that is at its heart a national security issue. My arguments in favor of my proposed Universal Health Care amendment can be read at here and here. But please read the following first.
* * *
The United States government needs money. The following two proposed amendments to the U.S. Constitution would create an enormous perpetual revenue stream and would do so reasonably and fairly in legitimate ways that are easily justifiable to even the most ardently conservative capitalist. Simply, goods and services deserve fair compensation, and that end is what is being accomplished in what I propose.
The world has changed since September 17, 1787, when the signing of the Constitution took place in Philadelphia. Then, America was mostly self-contained and mostly self-reliant in every way that mattered. Then, businesses sold their goods and services locally or regionally, very rarely nationally, and almost never internationally. Then, American businesses served America and cared about America, because America was where they profited. Today, America exists in a global economy that barely recognizes national boundaries and the sovereignty of nations, a global economy in which corporate business interests are no longer defined by any sort of national loyalty. The consequence of this remarkable embrace of the global marketplace by multinational corporations is nothing short of an all-out economic attack on America, and the national security interests of America have certainly been compromised in the outcomes.
The world has been engaged in an Economic World War for many years now, though the U.S. government publicly ignores that war at every turn. Unfortunately, America is now in a situation so dire that we are at risk of perishing as a nation unless we quickly wake up to the power shifts that are occurring at the heart of the new global economy. Enacting the following amendments would stem the tide of the Economic World War in the same manner that the D-Day Invasion stemmed the tide of World War Two. The war would not be over, but a mainland beachhead would be established from which the remaining battles could be supplied and reinforced. Victory was not made assured on D-Day, but it was made possible. As it is now in the Economic World War, the stark realities are all working against the U.S., and victory seems impossible. To make victory possible again would be to restore the hope that is the very promise of the American ideal: that the best days are still to come, that greatness is our children’s destiny.
In any search for a war strategy, a nation must first make an honest assessment of its best assets with a keen eye toward finding the weaknesses and holes. America is an implausible miracle of history, something best described with the Biblical phrase “in the fullness of time” — as if a greater purpose was at stake. What held America together at its forming revolution, and then during its Civil War, and still now in 2011 are mere words on paper: a Declaration of Independence and a United States Constitution. And so I searched the U.S. Constitution for its weaknesses and holes, and I found the following:
The Constitution Of The United States:
Article I Section 8. [1] The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States; …
[3] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes; …
[8] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries; …
[18] To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
The following amendments to the U.S. Constitution should be placed into those found weaknesses and holes as strategic reinforcements in our nation’s effort to turn the tide in the Economic World War.
Proposed Amendment XXVIII
Re: Article I Section 8. [3]
All multinational corporations or enterprises, international corporations, transnational corporations, and micro-multinational corporations with management headquarters located in a home country outside of the United States shall be recognized as foreign Nations, and shall be required to contract an Agreement with the United States Congress before selling their goods and services in the United States or its territories.
Proposed Amendment XXIX
Re: Article I Section 8. [8]
The United States shall have one percent (1%) ownership of each and every copyright and patent issued and registered by the United States government. The ownership shall be limited to the pre-tax gross revenues generated by any and all uses of that which is protected by U.S. copyright and patent law, and all such ownership shall be without exception. All revenues earned from such ownership shall be used to fund the free public education guaranteed to citizens by law, with all revenues from patents supporting Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics education exclusively and all revenues from copyrights supporting either Arts and Humanities education or Physical Education and Health education exclusively according to the general categories that create the revenues (i.e. computer-related patents support computer science education, music copyrights support music arts education, sporting event copyrights support physical education, and so forth).
COMMENTARY
The best solution to a problem is often the simplest solution that is the most obvious solution. Both of my proposed amendments are solutions of that sort.
A wise person gains leverage in a negotiation by shrewdly bargaining his/her most valuable asset both first and last. Always, the most valuable asset is made the end prize, and it is never given away cheaply. Rather, it is that which is purchased — the Biblical “pearl of great price” (Matt. 13:45-46) for which one would sell everything he/she owns.
The United States Congress owns the constitutional right “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations,” which means: to control access to the biggest, richest, most powerful economy in the world. Yet Congress routinely forfeits that right to the legal shenanigans of multinational corporations of every stripe, and it does so without a fight. Simply, we have allowed our senators and representatives in Congress to become saps, wimps, chumps, and dupes. Multinational corporations must look upon Americans as morons and prostitutes, because we are so easily made to heel. Quite literally, Congress has given away the store — the American people — to unfriendly powers that are intent on usurping control over the American marketplace. It is an outrage that must stop.
My proposed Amendment XXVIII (28) would dramatically change the world overnight, and then more and more so every day thereafter. The final outcome after the necessary transition would find America richer, stronger, and more economically vibrant than ever before. And every multinational corporation in the world would be humbled as a result.
“All multinational corporations or enterprises, international corporations, transnational corporations, and micro-multinational corporations … recognized as foreign Nations” by the amendment would surely fight against the amendment’s ratification with tremendous resources and all-out zeal, and would threaten terrible consequences if ratification ever occurred. But all of those corporations would quickly line up to “contract an Agreement with the United States Congress” following the amendment’s ratification, because maintaining a presence in the American marketplace is worth vastly more than whatever loss of profits might be suffered in the agreement. That is the truth. That is the gamble.
Understand this: every multinational corporation of any sort that had its management headquarters located in the United States would not be recognized as a foreign Nation, and would not “be required to contract an Agreement with the United States Congress before selling their goods and services in the United States or its territories.” Those corporations would identify the United States as their “home country” and could rightly identify themselves as American, and they would benefit from that distinction.
The first expected outcome from ratification of my proposed amendment is that more multinational corporations would choose to become American. In doing so, they could no longer dodge U.S. corporate taxes in any way, and U.S. tax revenues would therefore increase substantially. More importantly, the first expected outcome could result in more national loyalty from those corporations that choose to be American, and the national security interests of the United States would certainly be served by that increased loyalty.
The second expected outcome from ratification is that many jobs would be created for American workers, both by those corporations choosing to be American and by those corporations “required to contract an Agreement with the United States Congress before selling their goods and services in the United States or its territories.” Contract incentives rewarding the creation of permanent American jobs that are not tax subsidized would be a big part of the Agreement proposal presented by Congress to “foreign Nation” corporations. The Agreement would offer several choices, but creating permanent jobs for American workers would be clearly the advantaged choice for most corporations.
The third expected outcome follows the first two, but would supersede both in importance if Congress lived up to its oath of office, that third expected outcome being: Congress would designate select American publicly-traded corporations as U.S. National Security Corporations, and would grant those corporations extraordinary stock market protections on an ongoing basis in order to protect U.S. national security interests at all times. For example, those corporations could have their stock protected by law from all short selling, options trading, and programmed trading that is manipulative and/or hostile. Also, the legal protections could require all foreigners who own those stocks to first register with the U.S. government and then hold their stock in U.S. National Security Corporations in accounts that could be immediately and permanently frozen without recourse by the U.S. government at any time of national emergency.
The fact is: America must minimally have at all times the functioning manufacturing base that is necessary to quickly arm and defend itself in times of war, and that includes textile manufacturing for military uniforms and supplies, and every other kind of essential manufacturing that we have already allowed multinational corporations to send to China and India and other foreign countries where cheaper labor is available. America has been terribly irresponsible in creating our current predicament, and so our federal government must now be heroic in restoring our national security at every level of American society.
Know this: U.S. National Security Corporations would be prized buy-and-hold investment stocks, because those stocks would be largely immune to market gyrations due to their Congress-favored protections. Quite simply, those stocks alone could restore public trust in the U.S. stock markets, and that restored stability is desperately needed now. Frankly, to buy stock in a U.S. National Security Corporation would be to make a long-term investment in America’s future; it would be patriotic. Though no specific investment return could be guaranteed, and though the investment returns would likely be modest in most cases, it would be a near-certainty that such investments would be reliably profitable over time.
Remember, a U.S. National Security Corporation would have the U.S. government as a guaranteed customer. If the U.S. government will not commit to buying American-made products, why should its citizens? The change in national self-awareness thinking that leads to self-interest buying practices has to start with “We The People” together.
Yes, we can. Yes, we should.
For clarity regarding my proposed Amendment XXVIII (28), consider the direct parallel it has to the illegal alien issue that plagues U.S. immigration policy, especially in light of the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are people in the eyes of the law. What should the U.S. government do about an estimated 11 million people who are living in our country illegally? Deportation seems harsh in many individual cases, though to ever grant amnesty to illegal immigration practices is to reward and encourage lawlessness. So too with the U.S. government response to multinational corporations that choose to locate their home country in a foreign land in order to dodge U.S. corporate taxes: we have become gutless to act in our own long-term self-interest. Why should any multinational corporation choose to have its headquarters in America when the U.S. government does not grant it any exclusive rights and privileges in our nation’s marketplace for doing so? The illegal-alien-equivalent multinational corporation is actually given an advantage when it sells its goods and services in America, because it avoids U.S. corporate taxes without penalty, and even without any obligation to ever just pay the difference in some meaningful way. It is an outrage that must stop, and my proposed amendment would stop it all immediately.
Having the United States Congress reclaim its ownership of the constitutional right “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations” under the definitions provided by my proposed amendment is the first step to restoring America as the world’s preeminent great nation. The second step that follows is equally monumental.
The United States Congress owns the constitutional right “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries,” which means: to create and enforce legal protections of intellectual property rights in the forms of registered copyrights and registered patents, and to resolve disputes over such matters through the workings of the U.S. Courts, including the Supreme Court of The United States if necessary. Yet the United States pays itself very meagerly for creating and enforcing such guaranteed legal protections as are derived from U.S. issued copyrights and patents — essentially, no more than very reasonable one-time registration processing fees for legal protections that the U.S. government will guarantee for decades.
What a deal, especially now — more than 224 years after the ink dried at the signing of the Constitution. Compare the technologies of the day in September 1787 to the technologies of the day today in December 2011. Just ponder this: Benjamin Franklin first proved that lightning is electricity when he flew his kite in a storm in 1752, and then invented lightning rods. The electric telegraph was invented in 1787. A whole lot has happened since. Back in 1787, music copyrights only protected against the piracy of printed sheet music, because there were no recording devices then and no broadcast mediums other than live-performance. And back in 1787, printing presses were laborious sheet-fed hand-operated machines, so printing hundreds of copies of something was printing a lot. Today, music copyrights protect against even the piracy that occurs when file sharing downloads happen in the virtual world of the Internet, and in every other imaginable case, too.
So what is fair compensation for the protections granted to intellectual property rights by U.S. copyright and patent law? Is the one-time cost of a registration filing fee fair compensation to the U.S. government for providing a lifetime-plus-50-years copyright protection that is fully guaranteed by the U.S. judicial system? Is the U.S. government being fairly compensated for the patents it protects? These are difficult questions, but mostly because maintaining a past practice always seems fair at first consideration, as in: “We have always done it this way, so why change it now?” Well, now is now, and it is way past time for a change. My claim is: U.S. government guaranteed goods and services deserve a fair compensation. The necessary justification for my proposed Amendment XXIX (29) is as simple as that.
Who pays the one percent (1%)? Understand this: “The United States shall have one percent (1%) ownership of each and every copyright and patent issued and registered by the United States government” means the U.S. automatically gets its share — it actually becomes the full owner of something — whenever a copyright or patent is issued and registered by the U.S. government, and that “something” is a 1% share of whatever is being protected. Furthermore, “The ownership shall be limited to the pre-tax gross revenues generated by any and all uses of that which is protected by U.S. copyright and patent law” means that the U.S. share does not ever first exist as taxable income for any other owner of a copyright or patent — the U.S. share is paid directly from the gross revenues to the U.S. as its share, as if the U.S. were a principal partner in a business venture. A failure to give the U.S. its rightful share of the gross revenues would be fraud and would have serious legal consequences according to both contract and criminal law.
But Know This: No one is obligated, compelled, or coerced to ever get a U.S. copyright or a U.S. patent except by a personal desire to protect their own self-interest in the best way possible to their greatest advantage. According to my proposed amendment, the cost of that protection should be granting 1% ownership to the United States of that which is being protected. If that cost is too high, then whoever created or invented a piece of intellectual property can choose of their own free will to leave that property unprotected in the American marketplace. In that case, the intellectual property could be stolen outright by someone else and reproduced for profit, and the original creator or inventor could possibly have no legal recourse whatsoever if that which was stolen was not a physical object of some sort. That means an intellectual property thief could legally buy an unprotected product, then reverse engineer it, and then manufacture and sell it for profit — and do so legally without any risk of penalty. That is the risk. That is the possible loss and forfeiture suffered by choosing to not grant the United States a 1% ownership as fair compensation for U.S. government protection of intellectual property rights in the form of a U.S. copyright or a U.S. patent.
It is important to know that there are no exceptions, even U.S. copyrights and U.S. patents held by foreigners, including foreign corporations, are subject to the requirement of granting 1% ownership to the United States. If an issued and registered U.S. copyright or U.S. patent is sold from one person/corporation to another in part or in whole, the United States still maintains its 1% ownership without change. In fact, the United States cannot sell, forfeit, or cancel its 1% ownership under any circumstance, because the United States is We The People.
The school funding portion of the proposed amendment is based in the fundamental aspect of a Biblical tithe, in that a blessing has its source. My contentions are these: 1) American education contributes to American success; 2) American schools foster American creativity; 3) American teachers deserve the opportunity to do their best work with the best resources available; 4) saying “thank you” never hurt anyone, and sometimes those words inspire greatness; and 5) my formula for revenue distribution can be trusted to withstand bureaucratic tampering. The spiritual guidance of “being blessed to be a blessing” applies — of giving back by passing forward the gift.
Not every creator and not every inventor is so spiritual and giving as I suggest, and many such people certainly hated school with every fiber of their being. Even so … even so … I too hated school. But hope must spring eternal in this one respect, despite all. Why? By my observation, we have thus far proven ourselves to be failures as a nation regarding the funding and the purpose of public education, and what I propose might be our last best chance to get it right. That is an arrogant statement, but it is wholly correct nonetheless. America simply must put public education as its highest priority if it wants to maintain itself as a great nation.
The principal awareness — the guiding light — must be this: America’s greatest natural and national resources — indeed, the very treasure of the land — are its best and brightest students, its young geniuses, those whose potentials are truly surpassing. No gold mine, no oil field, and no vastness of untapped mineral deposit compares in value to the potentials of our best young minds. Yet we throw those potentials to the feckless winds of fate as if the seeds can be counted on to sprout of their own accord no matter where they might land.
The public school funding that would be accomplished by my proposed Amendment XXIX (29), is enormous and staggering — almost beyond measure. Remember, the United States would claim one percent (1%) ownership of annual revenue numbers like these:
Dedicated to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education:
U.S. prescription sales (2008) = $291 billion
Source: http://www.imshealth.com/portal/site/imshealth/menuitem.a46c6d4df3db4b3d88f611019418c22a/?vgnextoid=078ce5b87da10210VgnVCM100000ed152ca2RCRD&vgnextchannel=41a67900b55a5110VgnVCM10000071812ca2RCRD&vgnextfmt=default
U.S. computer software industry (2010) = $240 billion
Source: http://www.hoovers.com/industry/computer-software/1121-1.html
U.S. computer hardware market (2008) = $60.6 billion
Source: http://expresatec.net/computer-hardware-united-states-industry-guide-aarkstore-enterprise-market-reserach-report/
U.S. chemicals industry (2010) = $700 billion
Source: http://www.hoovers.com/industry/chemical-manufacturing/1085-1.html
Do the math: Already almost $1.3 trillion x 1% = $13 billion
In 2007-08, there were 132,656 elementary and secondary schools in the United States (K-12 in total), 98,916 that were public schools and 33,740 that were private schools.
Source: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d10/tables/dt10_005.asp
Rough math: $13 billion / 100,000 public schools = $130,000 per school per year for STEM education only … and we are still counting! Just consider annual mobile phone sales; and home appliance and TV sales; and automobile and truck sales; and heavy equipment sales; and military defense contract sales; and patented seed sales; and medical devices sales; and medical diagnostic equipment and surgery supply sales; and recreational vehicle, equipment, and gun sales; and … Consider that the 2010 revenues at Boeing Co. totaled $64.3 billion, and probably ever dollar of that was directly related to sales of patented products. Source: http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/earnings/earnings.asp?ticker=BA:US
Certainly, the per school per year funding for STEM education only will approximate at least $260,000, which will pay for five teacher salaries averaging $52,000 per year.
But those “rough math” numbers go into the stratosphere when appropriate factoring is done. For example, I will use my local public school district (Eugene School District 4J in Oregon) as a general case model. 4J has two “K-5” (6-year) elementary schools feed into one “6-8” (3-year) middle school, and two “6-8” (3-year) middle schools feed into one “9-12” (4-year) high school. Therefore, the elementary schools and the middle schools in 4J are weighted equivalents when “per student per year” factoring is done. That is: a 375-student 6-year elementary school (62.5 students per grade) equals a 375-student 3-year (125 students per grade) middle school, when the basic unit is a school. But a 1000-student 4-year (250 students per grade) high school is different. Doing the math using the 4J model to establish weighted equivalent factors finds that each elementary and middle school has a 0.723 factor and each high school has a 2.666 factor when weighted school allotments are calculated.
Therefore, if $260,000 is the per school K-12 non-weighted allotment dedicated solely to STEM education, then the weighted allotments according to the previous paragraph’s math approximate to $187,833 for each elementary and middle school and $693,000 for each high school. At the high school level, that equals eleven teaching positions dedicated solely to STEM education paying an average salary of $63,000 per year.
For various reasons, I would choose a weighted per school allotment on a national elementary/middle/high-school averaging with perhaps two distinct levels (rural/town and urban/city) over a strict per student allotment. I think “weighted per school” allotments would encourage schools of a certain size if it was done wisely, and schools of a certain size are generally thought to be better.
Also, I would allow for “banking of 10%” for up to five years to fund building improvement projects related to a particular category. For example, STEM allotments that were banked could pay for the construction or upgrading of science laboratories at our public high schools. In the 4J example, $693,000 x 10% = $69,300, and $69,300 x 5 = $346,500. I think a very fine science laboratory could be built and equipped for $346,500.
The money for public education funding generated by my proposed Amendment XXIX (29) from U.S. copyrights is not as great as that from U.S. patents in my estimation, but the amounts are still staggering. Consider these numbers:
U.S. Video Game Industry (2010) = $18.58 billion
U.S. Music Industry (2008) = $10.4 billion
U.S. Movie Industry (2010) = $10.57 billion
U.S. Book Industry (2007) = $35.69 billion
U.S. DVD Industry (recent) = $23 billion
Sources: http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/Video_game_industry
http://boxofficemojo.com/yearly/
Those numbers add up to $98.24 billion, which means a $982.4 million yearly funding for U.S. public schools if my proposed amendment were ratified.
In the realm of Arts and Humanities funding, school districts might choose to hire a specialist teacher that might be shared by several schools (for example, a band teacher). Or it could happen that the nation would elect to spend a certain portion of the funding to create Internet-based learning experiences that could be used by anyone, including homeschoolers and students who attend private schools. I think it would be wise to fund K-12 Internet-based learning experiences wherever that is reasonably possible.
Consider every bit of rerun TV programming is generating copyright-protected revenues, and so too is every TV broadcast of sporting event, including college sports, professional sports, and the Olympics, and those TV sports broadcasting contracts are enormous!
Think it all through, and do not be stupid in your thinking.
My proposal exclusively funds K-12 free public education. However, if citizens wisely kept current school-supporting taxations in place, much of those public tax monies could be redirected from funding K-12 education to funding public community college and public university education, meaning current college and university tuitions could be slashed. The implications and ramifications and outcomes and surprises hidden in my proposed Amendment XXIX (29) are enormous, and the justifications for doing what I propose are wholly fair and reasonable.
God bless America.
Steven A. Sylwester
December 12, 2011
Saturday, November 26, 2011
My comments to the Heritage blog regarding Obamacare
I have written several comments to articles about Obamacare that were posted online on the Heritage Foundation blog. My comments always contend that a better solution to the health care problem in America is my proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would guarantee Universal Health Care as a Constitutional right for all American citizens. I am copying my Heritage blog comments here without making edits or changes of any sort. Consequently, some of my writing might seem to be taken out of context. To provide the context for my writing, I have in every case included a web link to the article that provoked my comment.
Steven A. Sylwester
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I highly recommend that all readers find the time to watch two PBS FRONTLINE programs: "Sick Around America" and "Sick Around The World." Both programs can be viewed online for free at:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundamerica/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundamerica/view/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/view/
* * *
http://blog.heritage.org/2011/03/11/side-effects-obamacare-creates-more-unnecessary-work-for-already-swamped-doctors/
Side Effects: Obamacare Creates More Unnecessary Work for Already Swamped Doctors
by Margot Crouch
March 11, 2011 at 5:00 pm
COMMENT #2
Let us all agree: The health care system in the United States has a problem.
Let us all agree: Obamacare does not fix the problem.
Let us all agree: Obamacare needs to be repealed.
Let us all agree: The problem in the U.S. health care system needs to be correctly identified, and then it needs to be permanently solved with an effective system-wide fix.
Let us all agree: A system-wide fix to a national problem must involve the federal government.
Let us all agree: The federal government is "We The People" as an ideal and as an actuality; the federal government is not "those Washington DC bureaucrats" in wrongful collusion with the U.S. Congress, even if it seems so by every possible observation.
Let us all agree: We are capable of being adults and of doing the right thing, and we can act in the best interests of America to restore and then preserve our nation's integrity and its economic greatness.
Let us all agree: We have demonstrated our potential to be our worst enemy, and we must overcome the temptations that lurk in the dark side of capitalism where the importance of people is replaced by the importance of money as measured in profits.
Let us all agree: Our spouses, our children, our mothers, our fathers, our siblings, our friends, and our neighbors are more important than any corporation anywhere by every measure that truly matters, which are the measures of love found in caring, in kindness, in giving, and in forgiving — to love is to give without measure and without recompense. Corporations love no one. If love is to be an ingredient in America's goodness, then it must come from that "of the people, by the people, for the people" stuff that President Abraham Lincoln spoke of in his Gettysburg Address.
* * *
http://blueandgraytrail.com/event/Gettysburg_Addr...
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
* * *
Let us all agree: President Lincoln's resolve "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom" is a resolve that every new generation of Americans must join in with utmost sincerity — out of duty, out of honor, out of respect, and out of patriotism. The signers of The Declaration of Independence put their signatures under these concluding words: "And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor." As citizens of The United States of America in the year 2011, our mutual pledge to each other should be no less than that.
Let us all agree: Each one of us has something to offer America, and the gift that each one of us brings is worthy of note and of proper consideration, even if the gifts of some seem contrary and difficult. Remember, America was made by these welcomed people:
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Some of those welcomed people were ever only expert in their own opinions, but national greatness came of that. Those biblical days in our nation's history are not over yet, nor should they ever be over. Nourishment and truth is found in the salt of the earth — yes, even in those sorts of people whose education comes from living life.
I offer my gift: http://steven-a-sylwester.blogspot.com/2009/12/na...
You — the good people of The Heritage Foundation and its supporters — do not want to accept my gift, because it goes contrary to too many things that you hold sacred. But I ask: What is sacred? Webster's Dictionary defines the word "sacred" in this case as: "devoted exclusively to one service or use (as of a person or purpose)." Therefore, what? and why? and how? "When?" is now. "Where?" is here.
President Abraham Lincoln said on a Civil War battlefield what needs to be said again now: "It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Please accept my gift by reading my proposal. Thank you.
Steven A. Sylwester
COMMENT #8
Bobbie: Your use of "of, for and by the people" refers to what I wrote, so I will respond as if your comments were directed at me.
I am not participating in a game to complicate the U.S. health care system. If anything, I am doing my utmost to simplify the system.
Furthermore, I am not "trying to wear out the true American leaders." If anything, I am doing my utmost to call those leaders to the task of doing what needs to be done.
Bobbie, I can only conclude that you have not read my proposal from beginning to end. Please do so.
The U.S. health care system is driven by profit making, because its structure is a fear-based corporate enterprise that is multi-layered and interlocking throughout. Not one bit of it is altruistic, because the system does not allow for altruism. At its most basic is this suffering: the escalating cost of medical malpractice insurance instills fear in physicians, clinics, and hospitals by keeping the real threat of lawsuits at the forefront of all decision-making processes.
http://www.ehow.com/about_5514154_average-cost-me... http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2009/08/06/... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_malpractice
If you sort out the medical malpractice insurance costs problem, what you will find are parasites — very well-fed parasites who live off of the U.S. health care system without bringing any benefit to it at all. Those parasites are the lawyers and the insurance companies that specialize in medical malpractice. The amount of money siphoned out of the system by those parasites is staggeringly enormous. Worse than that: the "siphoned out" amount grows and grows each and every year. It is robbery that is akin to the doings of organized crime, except that it is done in broad daylight while everyone watches and acquiesces. We must rid the U.S. health care system of its parasites.
But the "profit making" is not just spurred by outside forces. There is plenty of internal greed, too. When the system promises a good living to its players, then the system needs to deliver on that promise — and so rules are made, and best practices are established. Unfortunately, "rules" and "best practices" made by a self-governing system always err on the side of self-interest, which — in a profit-making scheme — always results in more profits.
Consider: http://www.npr.org/2011/03/12/134456594/study-die...
Ask yourself: If I were a physician, what would I do? Would I permanently cure attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in my patient with an effective diet recommendation? Or would I place my patient in a chronic condition status that would require ongoing prescription care and regular office visits over many years? If I were a profit-minded physician, the temptation would be to do the latter.
Consider: http://steven-a-sylwester.blogspot.com/2009/10/co...
Ask yourself: If I were a physician, what would I do? Would I permanently cure asthma in my patient with an effective Vitamin D regimen? Or would I place my patient in a chronic condition status that would require ongoing prescription care and regular office visits over many years? If I were a profit-minded physician, the temptation would be to do the latter.
I can assure you with firsthand certainty that Vitamin D can literally cure asthma in at least some cases, but no pharmaceutical company making asthma-related drugs would ever want you to know that, nor would many profit-minded physicians who specialize in treating asthma and allergies. The system protects its own — and its own are not the patients!
Bobbie, maybe you can ignore all of the above, but you cannot ignore this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/09/AR2011030903983.html
The Associated Press news article "Preemie Birth Preventive Spikes From $10 To $1,500" reports an outrage — a price-gouging outrage — that should never be considered acceptable. Yet the article was written in Atlanta on March 10, 2011, and it reports: "The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is not involved in setting the price for the drugs it approves." In other words, the U.S. health care system fully approves of the pricing strategy of "KV Pharmaceutical of suburban St.Louis," because free enterprise capitalism is the American way of doing business.
Bobbie, I believe in capitalism. But capitalism only works in a free and open system that is fully vulnerable to market corrections. A market correction cannot happen in a closed system, nor can it happen to a monopoly, nor can it happen when price-fixing collusion is taking place. Monopolies are illegal. So too is price-fixing collusion.
There is another kind of collusion that happens naturally in a closed system, and I will call it tit-for-tat collusion. It is the sort of collusion that is evident in the following excerpt from the "Preemie Birth Preventive ..." article linked above: "But Snow and others said someone is going to have to pay the higher price. Some of the burden will fall on health insurance companies, which will have to raise premiums or other costs to their other customers." Of course, the health insurance companies will raise premiums (tit) enough to accommodate KV Pharmaceutical's pricing (tat) — and then raise them a little bit more just to be sure that their profits are not hurt.
THERE IS NO DOUBT ABOUT IT: The U.S. health care system is a closed system that has created a huge economic bubble as a consequence of rampant tit-for-tat collusion throughout its system. That economic bubble would certainly suffer a market correction in a capitalism system that was free and open, but the closed system and its inherent collusion work together to make a market correction impossible. Consequently, the needed market correction will necessarily occur somewhere else in the U.S. economy as a mysterious hemorrhage that defies explanation. But worse: the mysterious hemorrhage will only serve to compound the problem.
THE TERRIBLE FACT OF THE MATTER IS THIS: The U.S. economy currently has two huge economic bubbles that must endure market corrections but are not vulnerable to market corrections because they are protected within the structures of closed systems, and those two bubbles are in: 1) health care, and 2) public education. Mercifully, the governor of Wisconsin has started a process that might force the necessary market correction in public education, but no savior has yet started the necessary market correction in health care.
Long term, the only workable solution is to treat health care and public education much differently than they have been treated in the past. My proposal is an attempt to show what that might look like in health care.
Basically, the national health care budget must be permanently fixed in some way, and I propose that be as a capped maximum that is a percentage of the national GDP. My proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution states: "The government shall provide all citizens with free and equal health care, including all tests, treatments, medications, therapies, procedures, surgeries, hospitalizations, and long-term care that: ...
4) are affordable within an overall government health care program budget that does not exceed 15% of the government’s GDP."
Simply, my proposal concludes that money does not grow on trees, and that a healthy economy cannot overspend in any one aspect of itself. My proposal does not stifle creativity in invention and innovation. Rather, it serves to encourage and reward that creativity on an ongoing basis. As is the case now, those who successfully invent and innovate will be financially rewarded more than others, but not as a consequence of anything that could be construed as robbery.
Steven A. Sylwester
COMMENT #15
Bobbie,
Who is the "We" and the "Our" that you refer to? Are you the spokesperson for an established group? If so, please identify the group.
If you are writing in defense of your own opinion, then refer to yourself as "I."
Your "our this" and "our that" throughout your March 21st comment reveals a strange paranoia, which can only be described as a distrust of the U.S. government. In its masthead, The Heritage Foundation describes its Vision with theses words: "Building an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society flourish." To build such an America as that, the very first ingredient and the main ingredient thereafter must be an abiding trust in the U.S. government — a trust that cannot and will not fail, despite all things — a trust that believes in the prevailing goodness of America, despite all things — a trust that does not fall prey to worry and fear, despite all things — a trust that expects the spiritual motivations of "faith, hope, and love" to be common among all Americans, despite all things — a trust that will "Love your neighbor as yourself," despite all things.
Bobbie, you care deeply, but you are caring about the wrong things.
You wrote: "Free market will keep our personal health and privacy within our rightful control. Free market generates their own revenue."
The reality is this: The world has changed, and the rulers in the new world are corporations — corporations that are not loyal to any nation, or even to their own customers. These corporations protect themselves with self-serving contracts, and they answer only to their own shareholders, i.e. those who seek to profit directly from the corporations' business practices. In no way whatsoever at all at any time do any of these corporations ever care about you, your "personal health," or your "privacy," except in whatever ways it is profitable and in their best interests to do so, or to the extent that they are compelled by law to do so, or to the extent that their in-house attorneys advise them to do so to avoid lawsuits. That is the truth. Best business practices are starkly objective regarding anything that has to do with either potential or actual profits, and that objectivity absolutely nixes anything that even remotely suggests a desire to care about the subjective needs of a customer — any customer, even including you.
Simply, your health insurance company does not care about your health, except to the extent that it can successfully avoid paying any medical claims you might make. Your health insurance company profits only if it takes in more money than it pays out, so its incentives are: 1) to take in more and more (raise premiums), and 2) to pay out less and less (deny claims). That is the simple arithmetic.
Bobbie, exactly where does the free market generate its own revenue? In the case of health insurance companies, revenue is generated through premiums. What does the word "premium" mean? According to Webster's Dictionary, the word "premium" means: "a sum over and above a regular price paid chiefly as an inducement or incentive, a sum in advance of or in addition to the nominal value of something, a high value or a value in excess of that normally or usually expected." In other words, because your health insurance company must make a profit to stay in business, you must pay insurance premiums at a rate that is higher than the cost of the medical care you might one day receive. That is the truth.
The fact is: U.S. citizens are paying more money for health care than what health care actually costs, because the U.S. health care system requires the financial support — on a profit-taking basis — of a whole layer of system bureaucracy that does absolutely nothing except siphon their own profit out of the system — and they determine their own profit on a most-for-least basis that they alone control without any government interference. It is a robbery that is akin to the doings of organized crime.
Help yourself. Read this: http://steven-a-sylwester.blogspot.com/2009/12/na...
Steven A. Sylwester
http://blog.heritage.org/2011/03/22/morning-bell-failure-is-obamas-strategy/
Morning Bell: Failure is Obama’s Strategy
by Conn Carroll
March 22, 2011 at 9:13 am
COMMENT #62
In the Major Leagues, getting into a pickle is the result of your own incompetence, and any hope of getting out of a pickle must depend on your opponent's incompetence. Such is base running in baseball. Such is politics. Such is life.
One can only hope that the pickle caused by your own incompetence is not formed with two outs in the bottom of the ninth in the seventh game of the World Series when your team is one run behind and your best hitter is coming up to bat. When there is no tomorrow is when utter defeat happens. Incompetence always hopes that today is just another day.
And so the United States finds itself in a pickle. Our looking to the Left and then quickly looking to the Right back-and-forth trying to determine which way to run is missing the key element of the baseball metaphor, which is that there is an opponent — there is the other team. The U.S. problem — its pickle — is not among teammates (the Leftist Democrats and the Rightist Republicans), it is with outside forces — an opponent — the other team.
Think that through. Ponder it deeply.
I am a 56-year-old lifelong registered Democrat who now self-identifies as a liberal Republican. I have never voted for a Republican for president in the past, but I cannot imagine ever voting for a Democrat for president in the future. I have not yet changed my party registration, because I am still hoping that a viable third party might emerge before the next national election.
The fight is in the middle. America's last hope is waiting to be found in the middle. Rather than looking to the Left and looking to the Right, we need to start looking Up and looking Down. We need to find the Universal Truth — the Middle Ground. And we need to recognize the players and the forces on "the other team."
What caused me to become a liberal Republican are the following:
1) My faith in God, and my belief that The Holy Bible tells a true story, including the story of Creation — http://steven-a-sylwester.blogspot.com/2011/01/re...
2) My steadfast opposition to "same-sex marriage" — http://blog.heritage.org/2011/02/15/memo-to-the-w...
3) The welcome I have felt at the "Huck PAC" blog and at "The Foundry" blog, even when I have argued in favor of positions that are not generally thought of as conservative — http://blog.heritage.org/2011/01/13/gun-control-i... http://blog.heritage.org/2011/01/13/gun-control-i... http://blog.heritage.org/2011/03/11/side-effects-... http://blog.heritage.org/2011/03/11/side-effects-... http://blog.heritage.org/2011/03/11/side-effects-...
4) My surprise in discovering that I proudly identify myself as a Glenn Beck fan, and that I am willing to defend Beck against all comers, even though I do not always agree with him.
Why Glenn Beck? I was raised in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, and Luther's Small Catechism states:
THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
What does this mean? We should fear and love God that we may not deceitfully belie, betray, slander, nor defame our neighbor, but defend him, speak well of him, and put the best construction on everything.
Simply, I had heard and read so much disparaging vile criticism of Glenn Beck that I decided to find out about Beck for myself before I ever said one bad thing about him. So I watched his TV show to give him a break, and I kept watching his show, and I soon discovered that Beck is a decent and sincere man of goodwill who is trying very hard to make a positive difference in the world. When I reported this good news about Beck to my liberal Democratic friends, I was scorned — in some cases, with great hostility. Those scorning me admitted that they had never watched Beck for themselves, that their poor opinion of Beck was purely their parroting of the poor opinion stated by trusted others, and that they would neither quit their attacks on Beck nor bother to test my judgment of him by daring to watch Beck's TV show for an entire week to find out the truth for themselves.
The fact is: if I had ever said a bad word about Glenn Beck to anyone, I would be truly ashamed of myself now.
Two things about Glenn Beck are especially noteworthy: 1) he is searching for the Middle Ground, and 2) he is trying to identify the players and the forces on "the other team." And I must report that he is succeeding in both efforts.
On March 24, 2011, Paul Krugman wrote: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/opinion/25krugm...
and I commented: http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes...
What both of us wrote is worth reading.
After pondering again the above and what I wrote in comment to Krugman, I offer the following plan to identify "the other team" that the U.S. is playing against:
1) Congressional Hearing: Subpoena George Soros and place him under oath.
Objective: Determine to everyone's satisfaction whether Soros is friend or foe in two distinct and separate realms: 1) in the realm of currency trading, especially regarding the U.S. dollar; and 2) in the realm of "New World Order" thinking.
2) Congressional Hearing: Subpoena Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch, Muriel Siebert, Steve Forbes, Ken Fisher, John Bogle, William O'Neil, William Gross, and Richard Fuld and place them under oath.
Objective: Determine to everyone's satisfaction what should be the rules in the U.S. stock markets regarding short selling, and whether the new uptick rule is working. See: http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2010/2010-26.htm Also, consider with the panel the ramifications to U.S. national security of worldwide electronic stock markets: specifically, whether economic warfare against the U.S. is happening now or could ever happen in the future without the knowledge of the U.S. government, and whether effective covert economic aggression against one nation by other nations (for example, against Israel by Arab nations) in the form of negative stock manipulations could be happening without anyone's awareness. Especially, consider whether "investing" is happening in an Internet Age in which computer programmed trading by large investment firms is the norm, or whether what should be investing is actually warring manipulations and convenient collusions that are exceedingly unfriendly and unfair to individual private investors.
3) Congressional Hearing: Subpoena leading economists, business scholars, and experts in all aspects of international trade agreements and treaties.
Objective: Determine to everyone's satisfaction whether it is time for the U.S. government to start treating all multinational corporations as sovereign nation equivalents, and therefore require them to sign and then honor legally binding trade agreements or treaties in order to sell their products and services within our borders. A significant part of such trade agreements or treaties would be guaranteed permanent full-time employment for American citizens in U.S.-based manufacturing, service, retail/wholesale, and/or distribution centers. Simply, if a multinational corporation is going to sell in America, then it must hire and permanently employ Americans in America according to acceptable standards.
4) Government Accounting Office Report: Single-Payer Universal Health Care models
Objective: Determine to everyone's satisfaction what the economic impact of several different single-payer universal health care models would be. Of course, I offer my own proposal for GAO review: http://steven-a-sylwester.blogspot.com/2009/12/na...
Regarding my Universal Health Care model: I am fully aware of the tendencies that government bureaucracies have to become stupid and wasteful. My proposal states: "There should be no profit motive in the U.S. health care delivery system, except that which motivates efficiencies — and efficiencies are crucial. The thinking of Dr. W. Edwards Deming needs to be put at the very center of the U.S. health care system in a way that becomes defining, and that then radiates the thinking throughout the whole system with a mighty transforming force." If you do not know who Dr. W. Edwards Deming is, read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming
For example, if it were mine to do, I would determine through a national inventory based on the previous year's computer record of actual health care insurance payouts what the exact percentage of existing natural funding is for medical care across the U.S. I would then separate out experimental care and new care from established proven care, and I would assign the oversight of experimental care and new care to the U.S. Senate while assigning oversight of established proven care to the U.S. House of Representatives. Doing so would guarantee an established percentage of funding for experimental care and new care without any risk of loss of funding, and the focus on that care would be more stable and long-term because of its Senate assignment.
Because the U.S. House has 435 representatives who each represent an equal number of citizens, I would divide the nation into five equally populated geographic areas, so the House "established proven care" medical costs oversight responsibility could be foremost exercised on a regional basis. Each area would consist of 87 House districts, with both rural and urban settings spread across several contiguous states. This arrangement would allow for experiments in standard practices within an area, and for efficiency competitions between the five different regional areas in ways that would encourage ongoing innovations and inventions in even the most mundane aspects of "established proven care."
Understand this: because each regional area would have the same population, each regional area would have the same allotted budget for "established proven care" medical costs. Therefore, game on! I believe it is possible to get better and better, i.e. more efficient, if there is an active ongoing encouragement to do so, even within the context of a U.S. government health care program.
The main problem with the U.S. health care system is that many of its secondary problems are either invisible or unknown, and the most significant cost drivers within the system come from forces outside of the system. Furthermore, the system justifies its exorbitant compensations with its exorbitant education costs, as if extreme wealth should naturally be the reward for extreme education, especially extremely expensive education. Basically, all of the system's plugs need to be pulled out and then tested individually to discover where the overloads are occurring.
In the end, the system must serve the needs of just two user groups: 1) the caregivers, and 2) the patients — and it must serve the needs of those two groups equally. I do not include the needs of insurers and of malpractice lawyers, because those two groups are parasites, and they must be entirely expelled from the system if the system ever hopes to achieve its full potential. Quite literally, the insurers and the malpractice lawyers are on "the other team."
* * *
Rules for America:
1) Do not be stupid.
2) Know who your friends are and who your enemies are, and never mistake your friends for your enemies or your enemies for your friends; treat your friends like friends.
3) Learn to follow the advice given by Jesus to his disciples: “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves." (Matthew 10:16)
4) Always determine the weaknesses, failures, and unintended consequences of new technologies in an established system before those who have an intent for evil can achieve any advantage; think like a criminal, but never act like one.
5) Know this: The first person to actually listen to the other person usually wins the debate, because there is nothing so disarming and so endearing as the words "If I understand what you are saying, you mean ..." when the words that then follow turn out to be absolutely correct.
6) No matter what your religious beliefs might be, agree with the observation of Saint Paul when he wrote: "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." (1 Corinthians 13:13)
Steven A. Sylwester
COMMENT #64
Bobbie,
Understand this: I am opposed to Obamacare, because it only serves to further advantage the U.S. private health insurance industry.
The only workable answer to the U.S. health care problem involves nationalizing the U.S. private health insurance industry. The equivalent scenario is this: if gangrene is present on your foot and ankle, an amputation of your lower leg is necessary to save your life. America is now in the financial dire straits where the equivalent of an amputation is necessary. It must be done.
But take this to heart: What I am proposing is a massive system-wide efficiency upgrade. The only thing being "amputated" from the system is a whole layer of profit-taking bureaucracy that literally does not do anything productive or even necessary. Truly, the private health insurance industry does just one thing: it infringes. As an outsider, it successfully dictates to your physician what can and what cannot be done in your care, because it alone controls the purse strings.
Yes, the U.S. government can and will infringe somewhat in a Universal Health Care system, but at least the patients and the physicians will have a say in that as citizens. In the current system, the patients and the physicians really have no say, except as beggars in disputes in which the private health insurance companies serve themselves as both judge and jury.
Simply, the private health insurance companies control all of the small print. You can pick which "small print" package you want, but whichever package you buy is best thought of by you as a "grab bag" white elephant purchase, because no amount of thoughtful reading on your part will ever reliably tell you exactly all of what you just bought. Out of nowhere, private health insurance companies can — and do — deny coverage, and the usual reason behind all the baloney is simply this: they do not want to pay the bill, because paying the bill drains away their profit.
Buying health insurance in the U.S. health care system is in actuality placing a bet on your own destiny in a fixed game that is fixed against you. Why should anyone have to bet on whether they will ever get cancer? Furthermore, why should you ever be denied health care that you need because you placed hopeful bets when you should have placed despairing bets? What we are now doing is stupid. Worse than that: it is cruel and heartless.
Yes, we could do Universal Health Care in the wrong way. But it is possible to do it in the right way. If you can, improve on my starting point.
Bobbie, you did not offend me in your comments. In fact, I appreciate your comments very much, and I honor your sincerity. In any communication exchange, the question is always this: Am I who I am? Or am I who others perceive me to be? If I am the latter, then who is responsible for the misunderstanding: me or the others? Well, I cannot control the listening and the comprehending of the others, but I can control my own efforts to communicate. So, Bobbie, your comments were helpful, because they forced me to try again in making myself clear.
Steven A. Sylwester
Steven A. Sylwester
* * *
I highly recommend that all readers find the time to watch two PBS FRONTLINE programs: "Sick Around America" and "Sick Around The World." Both programs can be viewed online for free at:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundamerica/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundamerica/view/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/view/
* * *
http://blog.heritage.org/2011/03/11/side-effects-obamacare-creates-more-unnecessary-work-for-already-swamped-doctors/
Side Effects: Obamacare Creates More Unnecessary Work for Already Swamped Doctors
by Margot Crouch
March 11, 2011 at 5:00 pm
COMMENT #2
Let us all agree: The health care system in the United States has a problem.
Let us all agree: Obamacare does not fix the problem.
Let us all agree: Obamacare needs to be repealed.
Let us all agree: The problem in the U.S. health care system needs to be correctly identified, and then it needs to be permanently solved with an effective system-wide fix.
Let us all agree: A system-wide fix to a national problem must involve the federal government.
Let us all agree: The federal government is "We The People" as an ideal and as an actuality; the federal government is not "those Washington DC bureaucrats" in wrongful collusion with the U.S. Congress, even if it seems so by every possible observation.
Let us all agree: We are capable of being adults and of doing the right thing, and we can act in the best interests of America to restore and then preserve our nation's integrity and its economic greatness.
Let us all agree: We have demonstrated our potential to be our worst enemy, and we must overcome the temptations that lurk in the dark side of capitalism where the importance of people is replaced by the importance of money as measured in profits.
Let us all agree: Our spouses, our children, our mothers, our fathers, our siblings, our friends, and our neighbors are more important than any corporation anywhere by every measure that truly matters, which are the measures of love found in caring, in kindness, in giving, and in forgiving — to love is to give without measure and without recompense. Corporations love no one. If love is to be an ingredient in America's goodness, then it must come from that "of the people, by the people, for the people" stuff that President Abraham Lincoln spoke of in his Gettysburg Address.
* * *
http://blueandgraytrail.com/event/Gettysburg_Addr...
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate—we cannot consecrate—we cannot hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
* * *
Let us all agree: President Lincoln's resolve "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom" is a resolve that every new generation of Americans must join in with utmost sincerity — out of duty, out of honor, out of respect, and out of patriotism. The signers of The Declaration of Independence put their signatures under these concluding words: "And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor." As citizens of The United States of America in the year 2011, our mutual pledge to each other should be no less than that.
Let us all agree: Each one of us has something to offer America, and the gift that each one of us brings is worthy of note and of proper consideration, even if the gifts of some seem contrary and difficult. Remember, America was made by these welcomed people:
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Some of those welcomed people were ever only expert in their own opinions, but national greatness came of that. Those biblical days in our nation's history are not over yet, nor should they ever be over. Nourishment and truth is found in the salt of the earth — yes, even in those sorts of people whose education comes from living life.
I offer my gift: http://steven-a-sylwester.blogspot.com/2009/12/na...
You — the good people of The Heritage Foundation and its supporters — do not want to accept my gift, because it goes contrary to too many things that you hold sacred. But I ask: What is sacred? Webster's Dictionary defines the word "sacred" in this case as: "devoted exclusively to one service or use (as of a person or purpose)." Therefore, what? and why? and how? "When?" is now. "Where?" is here.
President Abraham Lincoln said on a Civil War battlefield what needs to be said again now: "It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom— and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Please accept my gift by reading my proposal. Thank you.
Steven A. Sylwester
COMMENT #8
Bobbie: Your use of "of, for and by the people" refers to what I wrote, so I will respond as if your comments were directed at me.
I am not participating in a game to complicate the U.S. health care system. If anything, I am doing my utmost to simplify the system.
Furthermore, I am not "trying to wear out the true American leaders." If anything, I am doing my utmost to call those leaders to the task of doing what needs to be done.
Bobbie, I can only conclude that you have not read my proposal from beginning to end. Please do so.
The U.S. health care system is driven by profit making, because its structure is a fear-based corporate enterprise that is multi-layered and interlocking throughout. Not one bit of it is altruistic, because the system does not allow for altruism. At its most basic is this suffering: the escalating cost of medical malpractice insurance instills fear in physicians, clinics, and hospitals by keeping the real threat of lawsuits at the forefront of all decision-making processes.
http://www.ehow.com/about_5514154_average-cost-me... http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2009/08/06/... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_malpractice
If you sort out the medical malpractice insurance costs problem, what you will find are parasites — very well-fed parasites who live off of the U.S. health care system without bringing any benefit to it at all. Those parasites are the lawyers and the insurance companies that specialize in medical malpractice. The amount of money siphoned out of the system by those parasites is staggeringly enormous. Worse than that: the "siphoned out" amount grows and grows each and every year. It is robbery that is akin to the doings of organized crime, except that it is done in broad daylight while everyone watches and acquiesces. We must rid the U.S. health care system of its parasites.
But the "profit making" is not just spurred by outside forces. There is plenty of internal greed, too. When the system promises a good living to its players, then the system needs to deliver on that promise — and so rules are made, and best practices are established. Unfortunately, "rules" and "best practices" made by a self-governing system always err on the side of self-interest, which — in a profit-making scheme — always results in more profits.
Consider: http://www.npr.org/2011/03/12/134456594/study-die...
Ask yourself: If I were a physician, what would I do? Would I permanently cure attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in my patient with an effective diet recommendation? Or would I place my patient in a chronic condition status that would require ongoing prescription care and regular office visits over many years? If I were a profit-minded physician, the temptation would be to do the latter.
Consider: http://steven-a-sylwester.blogspot.com/2009/10/co...
Ask yourself: If I were a physician, what would I do? Would I permanently cure asthma in my patient with an effective Vitamin D regimen? Or would I place my patient in a chronic condition status that would require ongoing prescription care and regular office visits over many years? If I were a profit-minded physician, the temptation would be to do the latter.
I can assure you with firsthand certainty that Vitamin D can literally cure asthma in at least some cases, but no pharmaceutical company making asthma-related drugs would ever want you to know that, nor would many profit-minded physicians who specialize in treating asthma and allergies. The system protects its own — and its own are not the patients!
Bobbie, maybe you can ignore all of the above, but you cannot ignore this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/09/AR2011030903983.html
The Associated Press news article "Preemie Birth Preventive Spikes From $10 To $1,500" reports an outrage — a price-gouging outrage — that should never be considered acceptable. Yet the article was written in Atlanta on March 10, 2011, and it reports: "The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is not involved in setting the price for the drugs it approves." In other words, the U.S. health care system fully approves of the pricing strategy of "KV Pharmaceutical of suburban St.Louis," because free enterprise capitalism is the American way of doing business.
Bobbie, I believe in capitalism. But capitalism only works in a free and open system that is fully vulnerable to market corrections. A market correction cannot happen in a closed system, nor can it happen to a monopoly, nor can it happen when price-fixing collusion is taking place. Monopolies are illegal. So too is price-fixing collusion.
There is another kind of collusion that happens naturally in a closed system, and I will call it tit-for-tat collusion. It is the sort of collusion that is evident in the following excerpt from the "Preemie Birth Preventive ..." article linked above: "But Snow and others said someone is going to have to pay the higher price. Some of the burden will fall on health insurance companies, which will have to raise premiums or other costs to their other customers." Of course, the health insurance companies will raise premiums (tit) enough to accommodate KV Pharmaceutical's pricing (tat) — and then raise them a little bit more just to be sure that their profits are not hurt.
THERE IS NO DOUBT ABOUT IT: The U.S. health care system is a closed system that has created a huge economic bubble as a consequence of rampant tit-for-tat collusion throughout its system. That economic bubble would certainly suffer a market correction in a capitalism system that was free and open, but the closed system and its inherent collusion work together to make a market correction impossible. Consequently, the needed market correction will necessarily occur somewhere else in the U.S. economy as a mysterious hemorrhage that defies explanation. But worse: the mysterious hemorrhage will only serve to compound the problem.
THE TERRIBLE FACT OF THE MATTER IS THIS: The U.S. economy currently has two huge economic bubbles that must endure market corrections but are not vulnerable to market corrections because they are protected within the structures of closed systems, and those two bubbles are in: 1) health care, and 2) public education. Mercifully, the governor of Wisconsin has started a process that might force the necessary market correction in public education, but no savior has yet started the necessary market correction in health care.
Long term, the only workable solution is to treat health care and public education much differently than they have been treated in the past. My proposal is an attempt to show what that might look like in health care.
Basically, the national health care budget must be permanently fixed in some way, and I propose that be as a capped maximum that is a percentage of the national GDP. My proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution states: "The government shall provide all citizens with free and equal health care, including all tests, treatments, medications, therapies, procedures, surgeries, hospitalizations, and long-term care that: ...
4) are affordable within an overall government health care program budget that does not exceed 15% of the government’s GDP."
Simply, my proposal concludes that money does not grow on trees, and that a healthy economy cannot overspend in any one aspect of itself. My proposal does not stifle creativity in invention and innovation. Rather, it serves to encourage and reward that creativity on an ongoing basis. As is the case now, those who successfully invent and innovate will be financially rewarded more than others, but not as a consequence of anything that could be construed as robbery.
Steven A. Sylwester
COMMENT #15
Bobbie,
Who is the "We" and the "Our" that you refer to? Are you the spokesperson for an established group? If so, please identify the group.
If you are writing in defense of your own opinion, then refer to yourself as "I."
Your "our this" and "our that" throughout your March 21st comment reveals a strange paranoia, which can only be described as a distrust of the U.S. government. In its masthead, The Heritage Foundation describes its Vision with theses words: "Building an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society flourish." To build such an America as that, the very first ingredient and the main ingredient thereafter must be an abiding trust in the U.S. government — a trust that cannot and will not fail, despite all things — a trust that believes in the prevailing goodness of America, despite all things — a trust that does not fall prey to worry and fear, despite all things — a trust that expects the spiritual motivations of "faith, hope, and love" to be common among all Americans, despite all things — a trust that will "Love your neighbor as yourself," despite all things.
Bobbie, you care deeply, but you are caring about the wrong things.
You wrote: "Free market will keep our personal health and privacy within our rightful control. Free market generates their own revenue."
The reality is this: The world has changed, and the rulers in the new world are corporations — corporations that are not loyal to any nation, or even to their own customers. These corporations protect themselves with self-serving contracts, and they answer only to their own shareholders, i.e. those who seek to profit directly from the corporations' business practices. In no way whatsoever at all at any time do any of these corporations ever care about you, your "personal health," or your "privacy," except in whatever ways it is profitable and in their best interests to do so, or to the extent that they are compelled by law to do so, or to the extent that their in-house attorneys advise them to do so to avoid lawsuits. That is the truth. Best business practices are starkly objective regarding anything that has to do with either potential or actual profits, and that objectivity absolutely nixes anything that even remotely suggests a desire to care about the subjective needs of a customer — any customer, even including you.
Simply, your health insurance company does not care about your health, except to the extent that it can successfully avoid paying any medical claims you might make. Your health insurance company profits only if it takes in more money than it pays out, so its incentives are: 1) to take in more and more (raise premiums), and 2) to pay out less and less (deny claims). That is the simple arithmetic.
Bobbie, exactly where does the free market generate its own revenue? In the case of health insurance companies, revenue is generated through premiums. What does the word "premium" mean? According to Webster's Dictionary, the word "premium" means: "a sum over and above a regular price paid chiefly as an inducement or incentive, a sum in advance of or in addition to the nominal value of something, a high value or a value in excess of that normally or usually expected." In other words, because your health insurance company must make a profit to stay in business, you must pay insurance premiums at a rate that is higher than the cost of the medical care you might one day receive. That is the truth.
The fact is: U.S. citizens are paying more money for health care than what health care actually costs, because the U.S. health care system requires the financial support — on a profit-taking basis — of a whole layer of system bureaucracy that does absolutely nothing except siphon their own profit out of the system — and they determine their own profit on a most-for-least basis that they alone control without any government interference. It is a robbery that is akin to the doings of organized crime.
Help yourself. Read this: http://steven-a-sylwester.blogspot.com/2009/12/na...
Steven A. Sylwester
http://blog.heritage.org/2011/03/22/morning-bell-failure-is-obamas-strategy/
Morning Bell: Failure is Obama’s Strategy
by Conn Carroll
March 22, 2011 at 9:13 am
COMMENT #62
In the Major Leagues, getting into a pickle is the result of your own incompetence, and any hope of getting out of a pickle must depend on your opponent's incompetence. Such is base running in baseball. Such is politics. Such is life.
One can only hope that the pickle caused by your own incompetence is not formed with two outs in the bottom of the ninth in the seventh game of the World Series when your team is one run behind and your best hitter is coming up to bat. When there is no tomorrow is when utter defeat happens. Incompetence always hopes that today is just another day.
And so the United States finds itself in a pickle. Our looking to the Left and then quickly looking to the Right back-and-forth trying to determine which way to run is missing the key element of the baseball metaphor, which is that there is an opponent — there is the other team. The U.S. problem — its pickle — is not among teammates (the Leftist Democrats and the Rightist Republicans), it is with outside forces — an opponent — the other team.
Think that through. Ponder it deeply.
I am a 56-year-old lifelong registered Democrat who now self-identifies as a liberal Republican. I have never voted for a Republican for president in the past, but I cannot imagine ever voting for a Democrat for president in the future. I have not yet changed my party registration, because I am still hoping that a viable third party might emerge before the next national election.
The fight is in the middle. America's last hope is waiting to be found in the middle. Rather than looking to the Left and looking to the Right, we need to start looking Up and looking Down. We need to find the Universal Truth — the Middle Ground. And we need to recognize the players and the forces on "the other team."
What caused me to become a liberal Republican are the following:
1) My faith in God, and my belief that The Holy Bible tells a true story, including the story of Creation — http://steven-a-sylwester.blogspot.com/2011/01/re...
2) My steadfast opposition to "same-sex marriage" — http://blog.heritage.org/2011/02/15/memo-to-the-w...
3) The welcome I have felt at the "Huck PAC" blog and at "The Foundry" blog, even when I have argued in favor of positions that are not generally thought of as conservative — http://blog.heritage.org/2011/01/13/gun-control-i... http://blog.heritage.org/2011/01/13/gun-control-i... http://blog.heritage.org/2011/03/11/side-effects-... http://blog.heritage.org/2011/03/11/side-effects-... http://blog.heritage.org/2011/03/11/side-effects-...
4) My surprise in discovering that I proudly identify myself as a Glenn Beck fan, and that I am willing to defend Beck against all comers, even though I do not always agree with him.
Why Glenn Beck? I was raised in the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, and Luther's Small Catechism states:
THE EIGHTH COMMANDMENT
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.
What does this mean? We should fear and love God that we may not deceitfully belie, betray, slander, nor defame our neighbor, but defend him, speak well of him, and put the best construction on everything.
Simply, I had heard and read so much disparaging vile criticism of Glenn Beck that I decided to find out about Beck for myself before I ever said one bad thing about him. So I watched his TV show to give him a break, and I kept watching his show, and I soon discovered that Beck is a decent and sincere man of goodwill who is trying very hard to make a positive difference in the world. When I reported this good news about Beck to my liberal Democratic friends, I was scorned — in some cases, with great hostility. Those scorning me admitted that they had never watched Beck for themselves, that their poor opinion of Beck was purely their parroting of the poor opinion stated by trusted others, and that they would neither quit their attacks on Beck nor bother to test my judgment of him by daring to watch Beck's TV show for an entire week to find out the truth for themselves.
The fact is: if I had ever said a bad word about Glenn Beck to anyone, I would be truly ashamed of myself now.
Two things about Glenn Beck are especially noteworthy: 1) he is searching for the Middle Ground, and 2) he is trying to identify the players and the forces on "the other team." And I must report that he is succeeding in both efforts.
On March 24, 2011, Paul Krugman wrote: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/opinion/25krugm...
and I commented: http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes...
What both of us wrote is worth reading.
After pondering again the above and what I wrote in comment to Krugman, I offer the following plan to identify "the other team" that the U.S. is playing against:
1) Congressional Hearing: Subpoena George Soros and place him under oath.
Objective: Determine to everyone's satisfaction whether Soros is friend or foe in two distinct and separate realms: 1) in the realm of currency trading, especially regarding the U.S. dollar; and 2) in the realm of "New World Order" thinking.
2) Congressional Hearing: Subpoena Warren Buffett, Peter Lynch, Muriel Siebert, Steve Forbes, Ken Fisher, John Bogle, William O'Neil, William Gross, and Richard Fuld and place them under oath.
Objective: Determine to everyone's satisfaction what should be the rules in the U.S. stock markets regarding short selling, and whether the new uptick rule is working. See: http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2010/2010-26.htm Also, consider with the panel the ramifications to U.S. national security of worldwide electronic stock markets: specifically, whether economic warfare against the U.S. is happening now or could ever happen in the future without the knowledge of the U.S. government, and whether effective covert economic aggression against one nation by other nations (for example, against Israel by Arab nations) in the form of negative stock manipulations could be happening without anyone's awareness. Especially, consider whether "investing" is happening in an Internet Age in which computer programmed trading by large investment firms is the norm, or whether what should be investing is actually warring manipulations and convenient collusions that are exceedingly unfriendly and unfair to individual private investors.
3) Congressional Hearing: Subpoena leading economists, business scholars, and experts in all aspects of international trade agreements and treaties.
Objective: Determine to everyone's satisfaction whether it is time for the U.S. government to start treating all multinational corporations as sovereign nation equivalents, and therefore require them to sign and then honor legally binding trade agreements or treaties in order to sell their products and services within our borders. A significant part of such trade agreements or treaties would be guaranteed permanent full-time employment for American citizens in U.S.-based manufacturing, service, retail/wholesale, and/or distribution centers. Simply, if a multinational corporation is going to sell in America, then it must hire and permanently employ Americans in America according to acceptable standards.
4) Government Accounting Office Report: Single-Payer Universal Health Care models
Objective: Determine to everyone's satisfaction what the economic impact of several different single-payer universal health care models would be. Of course, I offer my own proposal for GAO review: http://steven-a-sylwester.blogspot.com/2009/12/na...
Regarding my Universal Health Care model: I am fully aware of the tendencies that government bureaucracies have to become stupid and wasteful. My proposal states: "There should be no profit motive in the U.S. health care delivery system, except that which motivates efficiencies — and efficiencies are crucial. The thinking of Dr. W. Edwards Deming needs to be put at the very center of the U.S. health care system in a way that becomes defining, and that then radiates the thinking throughout the whole system with a mighty transforming force." If you do not know who Dr. W. Edwards Deming is, read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming
For example, if it were mine to do, I would determine through a national inventory based on the previous year's computer record of actual health care insurance payouts what the exact percentage of existing natural funding is for medical care across the U.S. I would then separate out experimental care and new care from established proven care, and I would assign the oversight of experimental care and new care to the U.S. Senate while assigning oversight of established proven care to the U.S. House of Representatives. Doing so would guarantee an established percentage of funding for experimental care and new care without any risk of loss of funding, and the focus on that care would be more stable and long-term because of its Senate assignment.
Because the U.S. House has 435 representatives who each represent an equal number of citizens, I would divide the nation into five equally populated geographic areas, so the House "established proven care" medical costs oversight responsibility could be foremost exercised on a regional basis. Each area would consist of 87 House districts, with both rural and urban settings spread across several contiguous states. This arrangement would allow for experiments in standard practices within an area, and for efficiency competitions between the five different regional areas in ways that would encourage ongoing innovations and inventions in even the most mundane aspects of "established proven care."
Understand this: because each regional area would have the same population, each regional area would have the same allotted budget for "established proven care" medical costs. Therefore, game on! I believe it is possible to get better and better, i.e. more efficient, if there is an active ongoing encouragement to do so, even within the context of a U.S. government health care program.
The main problem with the U.S. health care system is that many of its secondary problems are either invisible or unknown, and the most significant cost drivers within the system come from forces outside of the system. Furthermore, the system justifies its exorbitant compensations with its exorbitant education costs, as if extreme wealth should naturally be the reward for extreme education, especially extremely expensive education. Basically, all of the system's plugs need to be pulled out and then tested individually to discover where the overloads are occurring.
In the end, the system must serve the needs of just two user groups: 1) the caregivers, and 2) the patients — and it must serve the needs of those two groups equally. I do not include the needs of insurers and of malpractice lawyers, because those two groups are parasites, and they must be entirely expelled from the system if the system ever hopes to achieve its full potential. Quite literally, the insurers and the malpractice lawyers are on "the other team."
* * *
Rules for America:
1) Do not be stupid.
2) Know who your friends are and who your enemies are, and never mistake your friends for your enemies or your enemies for your friends; treat your friends like friends.
3) Learn to follow the advice given by Jesus to his disciples: “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves." (Matthew 10:16)
4) Always determine the weaknesses, failures, and unintended consequences of new technologies in an established system before those who have an intent for evil can achieve any advantage; think like a criminal, but never act like one.
5) Know this: The first person to actually listen to the other person usually wins the debate, because there is nothing so disarming and so endearing as the words "If I understand what you are saying, you mean ..." when the words that then follow turn out to be absolutely correct.
6) No matter what your religious beliefs might be, agree with the observation of Saint Paul when he wrote: "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love." (1 Corinthians 13:13)
Steven A. Sylwester
COMMENT #64
Bobbie,
Understand this: I am opposed to Obamacare, because it only serves to further advantage the U.S. private health insurance industry.
The only workable answer to the U.S. health care problem involves nationalizing the U.S. private health insurance industry. The equivalent scenario is this: if gangrene is present on your foot and ankle, an amputation of your lower leg is necessary to save your life. America is now in the financial dire straits where the equivalent of an amputation is necessary. It must be done.
But take this to heart: What I am proposing is a massive system-wide efficiency upgrade. The only thing being "amputated" from the system is a whole layer of profit-taking bureaucracy that literally does not do anything productive or even necessary. Truly, the private health insurance industry does just one thing: it infringes. As an outsider, it successfully dictates to your physician what can and what cannot be done in your care, because it alone controls the purse strings.
Yes, the U.S. government can and will infringe somewhat in a Universal Health Care system, but at least the patients and the physicians will have a say in that as citizens. In the current system, the patients and the physicians really have no say, except as beggars in disputes in which the private health insurance companies serve themselves as both judge and jury.
Simply, the private health insurance companies control all of the small print. You can pick which "small print" package you want, but whichever package you buy is best thought of by you as a "grab bag" white elephant purchase, because no amount of thoughtful reading on your part will ever reliably tell you exactly all of what you just bought. Out of nowhere, private health insurance companies can — and do — deny coverage, and the usual reason behind all the baloney is simply this: they do not want to pay the bill, because paying the bill drains away their profit.
Buying health insurance in the U.S. health care system is in actuality placing a bet on your own destiny in a fixed game that is fixed against you. Why should anyone have to bet on whether they will ever get cancer? Furthermore, why should you ever be denied health care that you need because you placed hopeful bets when you should have placed despairing bets? What we are now doing is stupid. Worse than that: it is cruel and heartless.
Yes, we could do Universal Health Care in the wrong way. But it is possible to do it in the right way. If you can, improve on my starting point.
Bobbie, you did not offend me in your comments. In fact, I appreciate your comments very much, and I honor your sincerity. In any communication exchange, the question is always this: Am I who I am? Or am I who others perceive me to be? If I am the latter, then who is responsible for the misunderstanding: me or the others? Well, I cannot control the listening and the comprehending of the others, but I can control my own efforts to communicate. So, Bobbie, your comments were helpful, because they forced me to try again in making myself clear.
Steven A. Sylwester
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