Citi Field Controversy

Here is my response to the controversy about Citibank not cancelling its contract for the naming of the new citi field.

Here is one of our problems. Congress needs to stop encouraging Americans to default on legitimate contracts, from Citi field to mortgages. Everyone is being told if you don't like the deal you made, just get out of the contract. How is anyone going to trust anyone else if your word means nothing and you can't even rely on a contract. If you make a bad decision, you are responsible for your choices. You may have to suffer the consequences for your choices. But that is real life, everyone can't be bailed out by the people that made good choices. Here's a simple example of how ridiculous this concept is... lets say a school class has a test, they are told what will be on the test and what is required for a good grade then the test comes and half the students fail the test. The other half (the ones that studied) are really pleased with their grades and proud of their achievement. After a little while, the teacher comes before the class and says some of the students feel bad that they got bad grades (while its true they didn't study) we don't want them to feel bad so everyone gets an A. That teacher just taught the entire class a horrible lesson. The kids that didn't study will never study and the ones that did are now disheartened and will not study either why should they there is no point to it. That teacher has just created a classroom of failures. I don't define failure as someone who tries and does not succeed every time but someone who tries, does what (s)he thinks is right and learns from their mistakes eventually they will succeed. A failure is someone who gives up, doesn't try or expects someone else to bail them out.

My Stimulus Plan

In the words of a great politician, Rahm Emanuel, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before." So, okay, let's go. How about returning to a country whose federal government is governed by the United States Constitution? I went through the Constitution and listed the items that the Federal Government should be collecting taxes for. Here's my list: 1) Senators and representatives and President's compensation 2) pay the national debt 3) Provide for the common defense 3) provide for the common welfare (this does not include charity the founders were clear about that, charity is to be voluntary not mandated by government) 4) Establish Post office and Post Roads 5) Promote the Progress of Science and Useful arts (oh, sorry, not with money but with patents and copywrites, so scratch that one) 6) Army and Navy. So from what I could find, from the 2006 budget our federal budget should look something like this: National Defense $535,943,000,000 + Veterans Benefits $70,410,000,000 + Justice Administration $41,342,000,000 + International Affairs $34,750,000,000 + General Science, Space & Technology $23,996,000,000 + General Government $19,085,000,000 for a total of $725,526,000,000.

So here's my plan, eliminate the IRS and most of the other bureaucracies and put the tax collection responsibility on the states. The states can submit their share of the budget to the federal government. The states can fund and determine their own education and welfare goals as well as its other needs. The states need a rainy day fund for local disasters or other needs of its citizens. The states need to take care of their roads, bridges, etc, etc, etc, etc. The states can also collect the taxes in any manner they see fit; flat tax, sales tax, or income tax. The states can even go to outright socialism if that is what they want and pool all their money "for the common good". Every citizen can decide what state they want to live in, businesses can decide what state to set up shop in and those citizens can select the local government representatives that fit their lifestyles best.

Here's another great part to my plan. It won't really matter if Rahm Emanuel or Karl Rove does the next census. If they (I'm sure completely innocently) get the estimate numbers wrong, a state that gets another representative also, gets an increased federal tax bill. They may have more incentive to get the numbers right. Here's a few states bills under my plan, California $86,929,382,488, Florida $41,792,972,350; New York $48,479,847,926 and Delaware, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming would pay $1,671,718,894.