Slashdot Mirror

I'm pushing for full implementation of Nelson Mandela Rules. It may be difficult to get the States on-board: the Federal Government can cut their funding, at best.

We can definitely arrest the operators of private prisons if they don't meet the minimum Federal standards. It's not up for Constitutional debate or for an evaluation of the risk of loss of Federal grants. You run your prisons humanely or we throw you into Federal prison so you can see how to properly run one.

The US government has managed to bypass the 1st, 4th and 5th amendments by creating and extending the 3rd party doctrine. This doctrine roughly states that once information passes out of an individual's direct control, he can no longer exercise any control over it. This gives the government easy access to huge amounts of shared information.

Provide additional data on this topic. I must fix this.

I really need to reform 18 USC 1030, particularly 1030(e)(2)(B) (a catch-all that means "any computer", because any computer you can access on the Internet is used in or affecting interstate commerce) and 1030(c) (a complicated mess of escalating punishments).

I also need to reform 18 USC 1030(a), notably 1030(a)(4), to change that $5,000 to at least $15,000, but potentially as high as $50,000, to be adjusted with Chained-CPI inflation (regular CPI is used for benefits programs; Chained-CPI can be used for civil/criminal distinctions). 1030(a) needs to distinguish between cases of national security and private matters; and in the case of private matters, actual damages below the established limit (e.g. $50,000) make the case a civil matter, and not criminal misdemeanor or felony. Criminal matters occur as per the nature of the crime, e.g. criminal hacking with the intent of causing bodily injury or death is a felony because it's attempted murder.

If you're in the US, you can donate to my campaign. IANAL but legal language is easy to understand and most of it is self-contained in here; I'll draft a bill this week as a starting point, and can work from there when I'm elected to get something actually viable going.

That can be interpreted 2 ways: more who want to work can, or that more have to work to make ends meet instead of take care of family, etc.

I keep pointing out the second because people try to frame the labor force participation rate as the real unemployment rate. In this context, however, it shows that there are jobs for humans--not just that some percentage of those looking for work are able to work. So all of this tech hasn't been making jobs simply evaporate forever.

our recessions have arguably been getting longer and deeper.

If you graph LNS14000000 back to 1948, that statement is more-questionable.

That's one approach to spreading the wealth, but another is to tax the rich and use it to expand vocational education.

Vocational training is one part of it; but first, the jobs have to be available. You don't necessarily need to tax the rich, either, although we do need a revenue source and that's the likely one for adding a new universal college initiative. For universal healthcare, it's like 1.6%; for a universal dividend, the top tax rate actually falls by 3.6%, which makes room to get universal healthcare, college, and some tax shuffling in before you start raising that top bracket (it ends up at some 43% with everything including funding Social Security retirement and disability benefits exclusively by taxing the highest bracket). The Dividend actually ends poverty.

I generally try to avoid tax increases as best I can--the Dividend is designed to move the income level at which you're paying $0 or less in taxes upwards over time, and to lower costs (and taxes in general) strikingly around that level. Efficiency and fiscal responsibility are important: how do we pay for anything like free college and healthcare when we're already taxing at 100%?

Link doesn't work for me.

Works for me in an incognito window by copying the link on slashdot and pasting it into an incognito window in chrome. This is a work-in-progress that starts outlining the same thing. It looks like it dropped the query, so maybe this one for the whitepaper?.

my point was and is that raw efficiency may be secondary to other human desires/emotions, which could be why T was elected.

It's security. Individual people--and groups of individuals--need security.

Ha, and here I thought I was talking too much. ;)

You can always contribute to my campaign. The average congressional challenger spends $3M, but I'm using more modern digital marketing and think I can do it in $100k. We also think my opponent is retiring, so the bar is lower without an incumbent in the game.

My core platform is anti-poverty, healthcare, and fiscal responsibility. Criminal justice reform and ending identity theft are things that turned out to be easy, and so got drawn in shortly after I started. Criminal justice reform is going to be big, though—almost as big as healthcare and the Dividend, in terms of changing the landscape of America. Our rate of incarceration is legendary, and recidivism is unbelievable; and I'm going to use every incentive possible to turn that around to match the nation with the lowest rate of either: Norway.

The guns will still be a problem, but not nearly as much without so many people running around trying to shoot other people.

Why would it telegraph? I'm just a politician, so I don't know much about these things.

One of a politician's jobs is to 'always be on' when in public. That means acting – specifically connecting with individuas quickly, to be simpatico with them, to learn their actual thoughts. Acting isn't necessarily lying––listen to campaign-stumping speeches for a given political candidate vs. who they are talking to at the moment.

A politician's job (1/2 of it) is to be consistently approachable and hopefully charismatic in some way (other 1/2 is issues, law, ranking priorities, and necessarily making some sausage on occasion. More so for the Democrats (US) because they are a coalition party, versus the Republicans who are more top-down in managing young politicians. (I didn't have time to write a shorter post.)

For smart scientists, engineers, programmers, or other smart people who are well-read. . . We might have an interesting contribution to a discussion (imagine cocktail party), but the mention of having observed something previously unrecognized by others despite your effort, and yet when you join the answer just pops out. Most of the group will be happy, but you will leave a couple with envy – the ones who were trying to 'look smart' or whatever.

"If you are rich, beautiful, or smart; you walk around with a target painted on your back." –– unknown

PS –– I've lived by the Grosvenor stop for a year, before moving to Chevy Chase proper for the next. Tiger mosquitoes!

Why would it telegraph? I'm just a politician, so I don't know much about these things.

Actually, there's a workable alternative, but it's complex. You can actually get the tax burden to go down over time by structuring around a universal dividend. This takes a portion of all income, passes it out to all adults equally, and thus creates an equitable system. The dividend is structured in such a way as to reduce top-tier taxes as well.

Because the buying power of the individual benefit trends with GDP-per-capita, the poor become progressively less-poor over time, reducing their eligibility for welfare benefits. Think about it: at $27,000, a 2-adult, 3-child household in Baltimore passes the HUD income limit. In 2016, a 14% dividend (my target is 10%, but I have to start a bit higher and work down) would have paid $7,500/year per adult. At $23k income, the difference is about $12k: your household income is $35k (earned and unearned), and you get no HUD subsidy.

The first effect is that housing assistance (and SNAP, TANF, etc.) reaches further. HUD puts 75% of all eligible households on a waiting list. With everyone bumped up, the many no longer eligible have their benefits passed down; and those still eligible receive a smaller benefit, passing the difference down. HUD should actually end up with around half of its budget unspent, but I accounted for only reducing the cost by 1/4 initially. As the Dividend becomes stronger, it cuts into this further.

Middle-class tax rates go up based on how I built this; middle-class tax burdens go down because the Dividend pays out. Think about being given $7,500/year, paid $313 on the 1st and 15th of each month, and paying e.g. $5,000 more in taxes because you make a high middle-class salary. You're ... ahead by $2,500, not by $7,500. Still ahead. That tax hike (the $5,000) is a big part of the funding source.

Because it grows with GDP-per-capita, the middle-class impact actually shrinks. Eventually, nobody earning under $100k is actually paying taxes. Eventually, the 39.6% top tax rate (I'm repealing the tax cuts and jobs act) falls to about 33%, too, when the dividend is only a 10% dividend. That takes a couple decades: I'm cutting it back less than growth, and stopping at 10%.

The other part of the funding source is Social Security. Instead of paying OASDI from the retirement and disability trust, I also restructured Social Security to pay the Dividend to everyone over age 18 (target is 16), and to pay the same total benefit in retirement and disability. That means if you're getting e.g. $700/year from the Dividend and you retire with Social Security paying you $1,500, your retirement payment is $800. $700 + $800 = $1,500. The Dividend grows faster than Social Security's benefits (it's faster than COLA), so it unloads the trusts, makes Social Security solvent (permanently), and causes the FICA tax (which is all payroll at this point) to come down over time.

That rebasing of FICA to the Dividend provides about a third of the funding stream. The rest is restructured from existing income taxes.

The initial impact is similar to more than half a trillion tax cut. Getting healthcare to all Americans with better affordable care plus a public option to cover those who can't get affordable care would cost $200 billion. You can actually do both and come out ahead.

Incidentally, getting HUD and SNAP to accomplish their missions directly would require several hundred billion PER YEAR of additional government spending. The tax rates would need to come way up. This approach causes the tax burden to come down instead, and creates jobs by more middle- and lower-class spending (about 8%-10% growth), further reducing the number of households in need of benefits and, thus, Federal spending. I want to see if I can achieve an outright trillion-dollar (2016 dollars) tax burden reduction. Note that the amount of dollars received in excess of your taxes are the burden: a middle-classer paying $12k in ta

Private enterprise is more-efficient when properly regulated, when transparent, and when there is a profit motive for being more-efficient.

Public utility is more-efficient when demand is roughly absolute, complexity is relatively-low, and information is readily-available.

Let's talk healthcare.

Around here, Medicare averages $49 for an office visit. Carefirst pays $32 (with blood draw), and as low as $29. Medicare can pay $65 at a practice where Carefirst pays $32, while Aetna pays $185. The price on the door says $200 or $300.

Why?

Private insurers negotiate prices down. They use their big groups to negotiate lower prices, and of course insurance groups (e.g. in a union contract, spread across many small and large businesses) use their big groups to lean on the insurers.

Private practices hire consultants to push the prices up. These consultants analyze the market and recommend door prices low enough to make them attractive, but high enough to extract the maximum payment from an insurer. When an HMO or PPO contract is up for renewal, consultants target that specific insurer and try to adjust prices to get the best remittance rates and not leave money on the table, while also looking reasonable in the market.

Medicare computes an estimated cost of service, then adjusts for the area's cost of living.

We have an entire industry built around pushing up that cost of service. We have an entire industry around pricing things so that those medicare computations--and everything else--come out high.

Okay, let's play a little game.

Let's have a Federal fund that provides insurance for those without access to affordable care--a public option, no premium, and you get ACA Bronze, Silver, etc. based on your income level. We'll pay providers based on their remittance rates with insurers, using the range at -2 standard deviations: 97.5% of insurers pay this provider more than this price. We're looking at the Carefirst range.

Next, we take each small region (city, neighborhood, etc.) and identify the Tier 1 providers--the ones who have the grouped low price of care. That's going to be practices which provide the service as their primary service; practices which also perform a service when necessary generally charge a lot more for that service.

Average those and you have your regional standard of fairness.

Publish that number.

Now when the insurers come to town, they'll look at the guy trying to get $185 for an office visit and complain that the regional fair market price appears to be $48. Carefirst is still pressing for $32. The Public Option only pays that office $34.

This shows government intervention in the market (published standards of fairness) and an efficient government healthcare service.

It's probably safer and more-effective to make the Internet a government utility than to make healthcare as such. Nevertheless, it may be more-efficient to stick with regulation. It might even be possible to have municipal broadband of the lowest tier, and let private ISPs provide high-end Internet services. I know I'd still be paying Comcast $87/mo for 200Mbit/s if Baltimore gave me 20Mbit/s free; they might find many others will bail out if it's over $60/mo.

In fact, I think I like that idea. Let me think on that.

Right now, NationBuilder forwards to their own domain for SSL. They're in the middle of finally getting SSL on all custom domains so we can move away from HTTP. So if you donate to my campaign, it will shove you to a different domain under https instead of http.

It's kind of annoying.

It's at least got a better claim of news for nerds than my attempted Congressional Candidacy announcement via slashdot--which went purple. OTOH I do have a solution for identity theft and the post was right after Equifax got hacked.

Would you be interested in making a modest contribution to my campaign? I'm working to strengthen our social safety nets in a way which avoids tax increases, and on expanding affordable care and implementing a public healthcare option, which costs a lot less and incurs much-lower risk than single-payer medicare-for-all. I also intend to push real criminal justice reform to reduce recidivism rate and, thus, the amount of crime and the cost of our prison system.

I bring a lot of new solutions and align pretty tightly with the Democratic Party's philosophy of government. At the same time, I tend to operate in a manner simultaneously more-progressive and more-conservative than my peers, pushing strongly for next-generation poverty relief while maintaining a balanced budget and reducing taxes.

I hope you enjoy reviewing my platform and can help me reach my constituents and earn their votes in 2018!

Would you be interested in making a modest contribution to my campaign? I'm working to strengthen our social safety nets in a way which avoids tax increases, and on expanding affordable care and implementing a public healthcare option, which costs a lot less and incurs much-lower risk than single-payer medicare-for-all. I also intend to push real criminal justice reform to reduce recidivism rate and, thus, the amount of crime and the cost of our prison system.

I bring a lot of new solutions and align pretty tightly with the Democratic Party's philosophy of government. At the same time, I tend to operate in a manner simultaneously more-progressive and more-conservative than my peers, pushing strongly for next-generation poverty relief while maintaining a balanced budget and reducing taxes.

I hope you enjoy reviewing my platform and can help me reach my constituents and earn their votes in 2018!

Would you be interested in making a modest contribution to my campaign? I'm working to strengthen our social safety nets in a way which avoids tax increases, and on expanding affordable care and implementing a public healthcare option, which costs a lot less and incurs much-lower risk than single-payer medicare-for-all. I also intend to push real criminal justice reform to reduce recidivism rate and, thus, the amount of crime and the cost of our prison system.

I bring a lot of new solutions and align pretty tightly with the Democratic Party's philosophy of government. At the same time, I tend to operate in a manner simultaneously more-progressive and more-conservative than my peers, pushing strongly for next-generation poverty relief while maintaining a balanced budget and reducing taxes.

I hope you enjoy reviewing my platform and can help me reach my constituents and earn their votes in 2018!

Would you be interested in making a modest contribution to my campaign? I'm working to strengthen our social safety nets in a way which avoids tax increases, and on expanding affordable care and implementing a public healthcare option, which costs a lot less and incurs much-lower risk than single-payer medicare-for-all. I also intend to push real criminal justice reform to reduce recidivism rate and, thus, the amount of crime and the cost of our prison system.

I bring a lot of new solutions and align pretty tightly with the Democratic Party's philosophy of government. At the same time, I tend to operate in a manner simultaneously more-progressive and more-conservative than my peers, pushing strongly for next-generation poverty relief while maintaining a balanced budget and reducing taxes.

I hope you enjoy reviewing my platform and can help me reach my constituents and earn their votes in 2018!

I strongly oppose government efforts to weaken our protections. I'm relying on unbreakable encryption in my own campaign, notably in my plans to end identity theft and increase voter participation. The most-powerful encryption ever used has been the spoken word, in closed quarters, with a soft noise generator to prevent electronic surveillance: no record of communications. Written and then pulped notes. Anything that destroys the data.

I haven't translated these plans to my new site yet. I need to, but I've been working alone. My political competitor, Elijah Cummings, has expressed no interest in protecting our privacy from domestic spying.

Normally, he responds along the lines that those jobs are for teens who live at home.

I eventually (by 2022) want my Universal Dividend to pay out at age 16+ (but not lower) so teenagers in distressed households don't sacrifice their school performance by working a job to help keep the household solvent. The additional income will let teens learn about fiscal responsibility or, if they're already in very poor households (not really certain that's possible at this point...), provide additional support for their families.

Or women, who rely on a man to provide the essentials.

My Universal Dividend pays per-adult, so a two-adult household has two Dividends to help support it. Many women also work professional jobs, and may even bring the larger income in the household--the "reverse breadwinner effect". As well, many women live alone or are single mothers, and so need the capacity to support themselves and their families in the entire, whether by wage or assistance. There are many cases in which the income of the woman is an important fiscal concern in the household.

Or black people, who don't like to live in houses anyway.

Here in the city, a lot of black people live in tents due to extreme poverty; however, being that they live in the city, it's most-likely that they prefer to live in apartments rather than tents. My Universal Dividend will push many receiving HUD assistance over the income limit, and raise the remainder so as to be eligible for a smaller subsidy.

Take the folks I came across the other day, when going to have my suit repaired: a black man and his wife, living in a tent, trying to prepare for the upcoming snow. Between them, they would have $1,400 of Dividend each month. HUD can easily provide a small subsidy which will move this couple into an apartment instead, where they'd prefer to live; and with the additional consumer spending power in the city, there would be jobs available for them to work and bring further income, living better lives. It's clear to me that jobs and homes are what these people want most, and what they need.

Between the Universal Dividend and a Federal minimum wage pinned to 1/1000 of the annual Dividend per hour--that is,$8,769/year $8.78/hr minimum wage--a working individual in 2016 would take home $13.15/hr at full-time, or $2,192/month. A couple with a minimum-wage worker between them would bring the equivalent of $17.54/hr or $2,923/month. In Maryland, our minimum wage is $9.25/hr and will be $10.25/hr next year, so the numbers in 2018 will be somewhat higher. I'm certain this is enough for most families to get by without further assistance, although we can provide assistance for any families facing higher costs-of-living with minimal Federal expenditure compared to today.

So you see, it really isn't difficult to consider teens living at home, women, and black people in our economic policies. They all have the same needs: food, shelter, and economic security.

Normally, he responds along the lines that those jobs are for teens who live at home.

I eventually (by 2022) want my Universal Dividend to pay out at age 16+ (but not lower) so teenagers in distressed households don't sacrifice their school performance by working a job to help keep the household solvent. The additional income will let teens learn about fiscal responsibility or, if they're already in very poor households (not really certain that's possible at this point...), provide additional support for their families.

Or women, who rely on a man to provide the essentials.

My Universal Dividend pays per-adult, so a two-adult household has two Dividends to help support it. Many women also work professional jobs, and may even bring the larger income in the household--the "reverse breadwinner effect". As well, many women live alone or are single mothers, and so need the capacity to support themselves and their families in the entire, whether by wage or assistance. There are many cases in which the income of the woman is an important fiscal concern in the household.

Or black people, who don't like to live in houses anyway.

Here in the city, a lot of black people live in tents due to extreme poverty; however, being that they live in the city, it's most-likely that they prefer to live in apartments rather than tents. My Universal Dividend will push many receiving HUD assistance over the income limit, and raise the remainder so as to be eligible for a smaller subsidy.

Take the folks I came across the other day, when going to have my suit repaired: a black man and his wife, living in a tent, trying to prepare for the upcoming snow. Between them, they would have $1,400 of Dividend each month. HUD can easily provide a small subsidy which will move this couple into an apartment instead, where they'd prefer to live; and with the additional consumer spending power in the city, there would be jobs available for them to work and bring further income, living better lives. It's clear to me that jobs and homes are what these people want most, and what they need.

Between the Universal Dividend and a Federal minimum wage pinned to 1/1000 of the annual Dividend per hour--that is,$8,769/year $8.78/hr minimum wage--a working individual in 2016 would take home $13.15/hr at full-time, or $2,192/month. A couple with a minimum-wage worker between them would bring the equivalent of $17.54/hr or $2,923/month. In Maryland, our minimum wage is $9.25/hr and will be $10.25/hr next year, so the numbers in 2018 will be somewhat higher. I'm certain this is enough for most families to get by without further assistance, although we can provide assistance for any families facing higher costs-of-living with minimal Federal expenditure compared to today.

So you see, it really isn't difficult to consider teens living at home, women, and black people in our economic policies. They all have the same needs: food, shelter, and economic security.

Normally, he responds along the lines that those jobs are for teens who live at home.

I eventually (by 2022) want my Universal Dividend to pay out at age 16+ (but not lower) so teenagers in distressed households don't sacrifice their school performance by working a job to help keep the household solvent. The additional income will let teens learn about fiscal responsibility or, if they're already in very poor households (not really certain that's possible at this point...), provide additional support for their families.

Or women, who rely on a man to provide the essentials.

My Universal Dividend pays per-adult, so a two-adult household has two Dividends to help support it. Many women also work professional jobs, and may even bring the larger income in the household--the "reverse breadwinner effect". As well, many women live alone or are single mothers, and so need the capacity to support themselves and their families in the entire, whether by wage or assistance. There are many cases in which the income of the woman is an important fiscal concern in the household.

Or black people, who don't like to live in houses anyway.

Here in the city, a lot of black people live in tents due to extreme poverty; however, being that they live in the city, it's most-likely that they prefer to live in apartments rather than tents. My Universal Dividend will push many receiving HUD assistance over the income limit, and raise the remainder so as to be eligible for a smaller subsidy.

Take the folks I came across the other day, when going to have my suit repaired: a black man and his wife, living in a tent, trying to prepare for the upcoming snow. Between them, they would have $1,400 of Dividend each month. HUD can easily provide a small subsidy which will move this couple into an apartment instead, where they'd prefer to live; and with the additional consumer spending power in the city, there would be jobs available for them to work and bring further income, living better lives. It's clear to me that jobs and homes are what these people want most, and what they need.

Between the Universal Dividend and a Federal minimum wage pinned to 1/1000 of the annual Dividend per hour--that is,$8,769/year $8.78/hr minimum wage--a working individual in 2016 would take home $13.15/hr at full-time, or $2,192/month. A couple with a minimum-wage worker between them would bring the equivalent of $17.54/hr or $2,923/month. In Maryland, our minimum wage is $9.25/hr and will be $10.25/hr next year, so the numbers in 2018 will be somewhat higher. I'm certain this is enough for most families to get by without further assistance, although we can provide assistance for any families facing higher costs-of-living with minimal Federal expenditure compared to today.

So you see, it really isn't difficult to consider teens living at home, women, and black people in our economic policies. They all have the same needs: food, shelter, and economic security.

Normally, he responds along the lines that those jobs are for teens who live at home.

I eventually (by 2022) want my Universal Dividend to pay out at age 16+ (but not lower) so teenagers in distressed households don't sacrifice their school performance by working a job to help keep the household solvent. The additional income will let teens learn about fiscal responsibility or, if they're already in very poor households (not really certain that's possible at this point...), provide additional support for their families.

Or women, who rely on a man to provide the essentials.

My Universal Dividend pays per-adult, so a two-adult household has two Dividends to help support it. Many women also work professional jobs, and may even bring the larger income in the household--the "reverse breadwinner effect". As well, many women live alone or are single mothers, and so need the capacity to support themselves and their families in the entire, whether by wage or assistance. There are many cases in which the income of the woman is an important fiscal concern in the household.

Or black people, who don't like to live in houses anyway.

Here in the city, a lot of black people live in tents due to extreme poverty; however, being that they live in the city, it's most-likely that they prefer to live in apartments rather than tents. My Universal Dividend will push many receiving HUD assistance over the income limit, and raise the remainder so as to be eligible for a smaller subsidy.

Take the folks I came across the other day, when going to have my suit repaired: a black man and his wife, living in a tent, trying to prepare for the upcoming snow. Between them, they would have $1,400 of Dividend each month. HUD can easily provide a small subsidy which will move this couple into an apartment instead, where they'd prefer to live; and with the additional consumer spending power in the city, there would be jobs available for them to work and bring further income, living better lives. It's clear to me that jobs and homes are what these people want most, and what they need.

Between the Universal Dividend and a Federal minimum wage pinned to 1/1000 of the annual Dividend per hour--that is,$8,769/year $8.78/hr minimum wage--a working individual in 2016 would take home $13.15/hr at full-time, or $2,192/month. A couple with a minimum-wage worker between them would bring the equivalent of $17.54/hr or $2,923/month. In Maryland, our minimum wage is $9.25/hr and will be $10.25/hr next year, so the numbers in 2018 will be somewhat higher. I'm certain this is enough for most families to get by without further assistance, although we can provide assistance for any families facing higher costs-of-living with minimal Federal expenditure compared to today.

So you see, it really isn't difficult to consider teens living at home, women, and black people in our economic policies. They all have the same needs: food, shelter, and economic security.

There is NO social "safety net" in America. Trust me - been there, done that, thank God I survived.

Oh, I'm aware. I'm trying to fix it.

I can free up a lot of that money. My Universal Dividend is an enormous tax cut, stimulus, and aid package all in one. It's fundamentally new economic policy, and causes a reduction in welfare costs by making the poor less-poor. It grows with GDP-per-capita, so it lifts the bottom out of poverty more over time, thus reducing the need for welfare and the associated percentage of our GDP spent toward that. It even takes some of Social Security's burden, guaranteeing solvency and slowly cutting back the payroll tax without reducing the total benefits in retirement or raising the retirement age.

Welcome to a world of new solutions.

Well fundraising is hard. Care to help?

What about the engineers who are already unemployed? Don't they get a shot at getting back on their feet?

What we really need is some kind of social safety net that helps keep these people stable while they transition through the turmoil of economic change, and gives them a portion of our new growth--because they're unemployed, yes, and they got that way by being in the path of progress. Thanks for keeping the lights running for us all these years, and now your time is over; find somewhere else to be--maybe we kind of owe you for being there right to the end, too.

Yes, you got it right. He's not making a consistent argument; he's trying to poison the well.

I support Net Neutrality--its one of the few simple and obvious issues out there--and would introduce a bill charging the FCC with regulating the Internet to ensure equal treatment of access to all services from any given customer, save for configuration to prioritize (not accelerate) time-sensitive traffic (streaming, voice) and de-prioritize (not throttle) non-sensitive bulk traffic.

There are technical details which we can abstract to general details: balanced, equal priority between customers; greater delivery priority for time-sensitive packets. No throttling back a given service or making it so a certain user streaming Hulu is getting bandwidth at the expense of the next house over streaming Netflix.

I support Net Neutrality because the voters in my district are tired of Congressmen who won't push progressive policy policy; we want solutions and actions. It's time for a renewed focus in Congress on well-developed policies using the input of experts instead of political showmanship; and I'm asking you to support me with a modest commitment to my campaign. Even just $10/month helps me reach thousands of additional voters this term.

Oh it's enough to matter, for sure--that's why there's a giant minimum-wage debate. We didn't raise the minimum wage for over a decade, so it became smaller (due to inflation). Now we've pinned it to CPI inflation. I want to create a Universal Dividend pinned to productivity using income as a proxy: everyone (adult, planned to eventually be 16+) gets a share of a fixed portion of the income (15%, planned to eventually reach 10%), which grows faster than CPI inflation.

The narrative has always been that real median family income has stagnated, though. You hear about "middle-income stagnation", and you get people saying that the middle-class hasn't seen a real wage income increase since 1979, and other economists saying they've seen 41% growth in wage purchasing power. The fact of the matter is the ones claiming some kind of growth are more-correct than the ones claiming total stagnation.

I have cell phone service with unlimited voice and text, plus 2GB of LTE data and unlimited throttled data per month. It costs $15/month. It's on t-mobile's network. In 1990, even minimum-wage households had landline phones at $30/month here. Most of the minimum-wagers are living ... pretty brutally; they have minimal new amenities compared to 20 years ago, yet they do have some. Again: we adjust minimum-wage based on inflation, not based on productivity growth--which is something else my new plan changes.

So, the working-class does see wealth from productivity growth; the rich don't get all the newly-generated income; and the minimum wage is designed to provide nothing in terms of a share of productivity growth--that's not a rich-people-taking-everything trick, but a fact of the government having established it for a purpose of minimum living (Republicans will tell you it's not a living wage; they're wrong) instead of a fair wage.

By the by: be careful reading about "wealth". The wealth of an economy is measured by its productivity; people like to measure wealth by accumulation of assets, then claim the rich have gotten massively-richer because they have things. I like to compare the income flow instead, notably with population considerations, e.g. by looking at CEO cash compensation versus the number of employees (payrolls are paid from revenues; stocks are just inflation of the currency of a company's stock, dumping newly-created shares into the executive's hands while slightly-reducing the number of dollars everyone else holding the stock can get). Oddly enough, highly-paid executives tend to have larger companies with more employees, and receive fewer dollars compensation per employee--just with enormous multipliers. The CEO of Ford, for example, receives about $22.50 per employee per year.

To put this into perspective: an executive making 35x the minimum wage would get $647,500/year; an executive making $1M/year generally has 8,000-10,000 employees. An executive making $647,500/year today would have around 5,000 employees and receive $129.50/year per each, or 6.475 cents per employee per hour. Small business owners with few employees generally make thousands per employee.

Kind of puts a damper on those salary cap arguments, huh? People focus too much on the rich, and not enough on the poor.

Oh it's enough to matter, for sure--that's why there's a giant minimum-wage debate. We didn't raise the minimum wage for over a decade, so it became smaller (due to inflation). Now we've pinned it to CPI inflation. I want to create a Universal Dividend pinned to productivity using income as a proxy: everyone (adult, planned to eventually be 16+) gets a share of a fixed portion of the income (15%, planned to eventually reach 10%), which grows faster than CPI inflation.

The narrative has always been that real median family income has stagnated, though. You hear about "middle-income stagnation", and you get people saying that the middle-class hasn't seen a real wage income increase since 1979, and other economists saying they've seen 41% growth in wage purchasing power. The fact of the matter is the ones claiming some kind of growth are more-correct than the ones claiming total stagnation.

I have cell phone service with unlimited voice and text, plus 2GB of LTE data and unlimited throttled data per month. It costs $15/month. It's on t-mobile's network. In 1990, even minimum-wage households had landline phones at $30/month here. Most of the minimum-wagers are living ... pretty brutally; they have minimal new amenities compared to 20 years ago, yet they do have some. Again: we adjust minimum-wage based on inflation, not based on productivity growth--which is something else my new plan changes.

So, the working-class does see wealth from productivity growth; the rich don't get all the newly-generated income; and the minimum wage is designed to provide nothing in terms of a share of productivity growth--that's not a rich-people-taking-everything trick, but a fact of the government having established it for a purpose of minimum living (Republicans will tell you it's not a living wage; they're wrong) instead of a fair wage.

By the by: be careful reading about "wealth". The wealth of an economy is measured by its productivity; people like to measure wealth by accumulation of assets, then claim the rich have gotten massively-richer because they have things. I like to compare the income flow instead, notably with population considerations, e.g. by looking at CEO cash compensation versus the number of employees (payrolls are paid from revenues; stocks are just inflation of the currency of a company's stock, dumping newly-created shares into the executive's hands while slightly-reducing the number of dollars everyone else holding the stock can get). Oddly enough, highly-paid executives tend to have larger companies with more employees, and receive fewer dollars compensation per employee--just with enormous multipliers. The CEO of Ford, for example, receives about $22.50 per employee per year.

To put this into perspective: an executive making 35x the minimum wage would get $647,500/year; an executive making $1M/year generally has 8,000-10,000 employees. An executive making $647,500/year today would have around 5,000 employees and receive $129.50/year per each, or 6.475 cents per employee per hour. Small business owners with few employees generally make thousands per employee.

Kind of puts a damper on those salary cap arguments, huh? People focus too much on the rich, and not enough on the poor.

People are too focused on rich people and big business. You hear a lot about the rich paying their fair share, but not much about the poor getting anything. This was a key point in my dispute about the GOP tax plan in one of my recent press releases: the GOP plan doesn't put much of anything into the hands of the poorest.

This is another natural consequence: folks say, "Oh, maybe the Government can be more fiscally-responsible--WAIT NO, NO, KEEP SPENDING $200Bn MORE THAN YOU NEED TO BECAUSE FUCK JEFF BEZOS HE'S RICH ENOUGH NOW!!!!" That, at least, is the point of the headline, the "two-edged sword" comment, and the outcry. Really, how does Jeff Bezos being even more super-rich hurt anything?

We need to focus on excessive government spending so we can pay for things like, oh I don't know, a $200Bn public healthcare option to get 100% of Americans covered 100% of the time. The rich people are fine--they're rich, which means they don't go without food, homes, or healthcare. Let's talk about the 41 million people who don't eat every day: we obviously aren't serving their needs properly.

People are too focused on rich people and big business. You hear a lot about the rich paying their fair share, but not much about the poor getting anything. This was a key point in my dispute about the GOP tax plan in one of my recent press releases: the GOP plan doesn't put much of anything into the hands of the poorest.

This is another natural consequence: folks say, "Oh, maybe the Government can be more fiscally-responsible--WAIT NO, NO, KEEP SPENDING $200Bn MORE THAN YOU NEED TO BECAUSE FUCK JEFF BEZOS HE'S RICH ENOUGH NOW!!!!" That, at least, is the point of the headline, the "two-edged sword" comment, and the outcry. Really, how does Jeff Bezos being even more super-rich hurt anything?

We need to focus on excessive government spending so we can pay for things like, oh I don't know, a $200Bn public healthcare option to get 100% of Americans covered 100% of the time. The rich people are fine--they're rich, which means they don't go without food, homes, or healthcare. Let's talk about the 41 million people who don't eat every day: we obviously aren't serving their needs properly.

I am, quite naturally, a proponent of strong encryption standards, implementations, and practices to protect people's business. That's the foundation of my plan to create legislation charging regulators to use NIST published standards and the latest consumer-grade (read: generally-affordable) technology to put a sharp end to identity theft. It doesn't work if, somewhere, there's a magical little MacGuffin you could steal to undermine the whole system.

Criminals fuck up. They do things that draw a great deal of attention, and create a great deal of noise doing it--or they're irrelevant and pointless to pursue. Whenever you touch lots and lots of things, you get your prints all over those things--you leave fingerprints, or glove prints, or you nudge things out of place. You leave behind a pattern. You interact with other people, and Special Investigator Mueller gathers evidence nine million years's worth of Child Pornography convictions and pressures them into revealing what they know of you.

If an encryption key shields you from indictment, you must be either too good to catch just by having laws weakening the usual encryption tools or not be doing anything of so much note as to require the attention of the lawman.

I am not sure what sort of law can protect against this. Constitutional law may; Federal law declaring there may be no law to weaken encryption can always be repealed in the same bill which establishes such weakening of encryption. Privacy laws generally provide all kinds of complex concerns and have loads of unintended consequences.

That's kind of annoying, because I don't like the ideal of continuous vigilance as a defense. We get old and slack; we get replaced by others; we get new lawmakers who no longer care.

The other side of that is that, of $2,656 billion in income plus FICA taxes, corporate income taxes amount to $299.6 billion. It's actually a pretty damned ineffective revenue source, and mostly functions as a Republican talking point which leans certain swing voters away from Democrats.

Corporations also report two different numbers for profits. The one the IRS gets includes deductions like accelerated depreciation.

Let's say you spend $1.1M and make $1.2M, with $100,000 of your spending on equipment. The Government will make you pay taxes on $200,000 this year; however, because your equipment is Schedule F, it depreciates 50% each year to 10%. So next year, when you spend $1M and make $1.2M, you report a profit of $200,000! Great! You then tell the IRS you had a profit of $150,000: that $100,000 piece of equipment depreciated by 50%. In the following year, that equipment loses $40,000 of its value, and so you pay taxes on $40,000 less than what you report in profits.

This has the odd effect of showing taxes paid as less than 35% of SEC-reported profits.

This is all highly-relevant to me because I'm running to establish a sort of Universal Dividend that takes 15% of all income and redistributes it, resulting in a much better tax outcome than the published GOP plan. In 2016, this would have put the corporate tax rate at 34.6%: 15% feeding my Dividend, and $168 billion of further corporate taxes.

As a matter of strategic politics, I intend to just eliminate the remaining 19.6% over about a decade, keeping my 15% Dividend funding source as the only Corporate tax. Nobody is going to allow corporations to not pay their fair share--this is money that goes to everyone's pockets as important actors in the economy, because we need burger flippers and grocery baggers, because we have a reserve labor force full of frequently-unemployed, and because technical progress makes us all wealthy by laying off a small percentage of the population during a temporary transitional period. The Republican talking point about corporate income taxes becomes moot.

The Dividend also replaces a portion of Social Security's payouts, so makes Social Security solvent at a 5.15% FICA--all payroll. It grows faster than Social Security's COLA, so it forces an eventual reduction of FICA to keep the Trust from overflowing with excessive cash balance: the payroll tax comes down over time, too.

A powerful reduction in tax burden on the middle-class; a powerful aid package for the lower class; and even a 2.6% tax cut at the top bracket. I'm over here creating highly-progressive policies to build a better welfare state where nobody goes homeless or hungry in America (and helathcare is on my radar), and I'm beating the GOP at its own game.

How are they this bad at this?

... okay let's be fair: I didn't just turn the taxes up or down; I devised an entirely-new system that's never been proposed before. I'm not even playing the same game.

The other side of that is that, of $2,656 billion in income plus FICA taxes, corporate income taxes amount to $299.6 billion. It's actually a pretty damned ineffective revenue source, and mostly functions as a Republican talking point which leans certain swing voters away from Democrats.

Corporations also report two different numbers for profits. The one the IRS gets includes deductions like accelerated depreciation.

Let's say you spend $1.1M and make $1.2M, with $100,000 of your spending on equipment. The Government will make you pay taxes on $200,000 this year; however, because your equipment is Schedule F, it depreciates 50% each year to 10%. So next year, when you spend $1M and make $1.2M, you report a profit of $200,000! Great! You then tell the IRS you had a profit of $150,000: that $100,000 piece of equipment depreciated by 50%. In the following year, that equipment loses $40,000 of its value, and so you pay taxes on $40,000 less than what you report in profits.

This has the odd effect of showing taxes paid as less than 35% of SEC-reported profits.

This is all highly-relevant to me because I'm running to establish a sort of Universal Dividend that takes 15% of all income and redistributes it, resulting in a much better tax outcome than the published GOP plan. In 2016, this would have put the corporate tax rate at 34.6%: 15% feeding my Dividend, and $168 billion of further corporate taxes.

As a matter of strategic politics, I intend to just eliminate the remaining 19.6% over about a decade, keeping my 15% Dividend funding source as the only Corporate tax. Nobody is going to allow corporations to not pay their fair share--this is money that goes to everyone's pockets as important actors in the economy, because we need burger flippers and grocery baggers, because we have a reserve labor force full of frequently-unemployed, and because technical progress makes us all wealthy by laying off a small percentage of the population during a temporary transitional period. The Republican talking point about corporate income taxes becomes moot.

The Dividend also replaces a portion of Social Security's payouts, so makes Social Security solvent at a 5.15% FICA--all payroll. It grows faster than Social Security's COLA, so it forces an eventual reduction of FICA to keep the Trust from overflowing with excessive cash balance: the payroll tax comes down over time, too.

A powerful reduction in tax burden on the middle-class; a powerful aid package for the lower class; and even a 2.6% tax cut at the top bracket. I'm over here creating highly-progressive policies to build a better welfare state where nobody goes homeless or hungry in America (and helathcare is on my radar), and I'm beating the GOP at its own game.

How are they this bad at this?

... okay let's be fair: I didn't just turn the taxes up or down; I devised an entirely-new system that's never been proposed before. I'm not even playing the same game.

So, on a 32-hour work week, would you prefer 6h24m days starting work at 10:30am, or four 8-hour days and a three-day weekend every week?

What about just ensuring that people get their fair share?

A fair wage, fair hours, and a fair share. Once again, we must offer the American people a new deal; Hell, it's about time!

Socialism doesn't work. History proves this.

What we have is equal opportunity in this country and freedom in this country, it's called capitalism and by it's very nature it doesn't distribute outcome equally because individuals have different abilities and make varying efforts. Equal outcome is socialism, which leaves you enslaved and not free.

Think of a 100 yard dash. All the runners run the same race on the same track and the same distance, only one wins. Opportunity was equal, but only one wins. Why? Because the runners bring differing skills, abilities, training and may apply different effort. The race is fair, even if the outcome varies. Who'd run if everybody got the same trophy? (That's the issue with socialism, there is no incentive to make an effort)

Socialism works just fine in Europe.

Equal outcome is communism, not socialism.
Communisim in 100 meters would be the people running different lengths so they all finished at the same time.
Capitalsim should be just the 100 meters as is but would most often now be the winner being the richest not the fastest because daddy bought them a motorbike.
Socialism would be them all having running shoes, one might have Nike, one might have Adidas but everyone has enough to compete

What about just ensuring that people get their fair share?

A fair wage, fair hours, and a fair share. Once again, we must offer the American people a new deal; Hell, it's about time!

Socialism doesn't work. History proves this.

What we have is equal opportunity in this country and freedom in this country, it's called capitalism and by it's very nature it doesn't distribute outcome equally because individuals have different abilities and make varying efforts. Equal outcome is socialism, which leaves you enslaved and not free.

Think of a 100 yard dash. All the runners run the same race on the same track and the same distance, only one wins. Opportunity was equal, but only one wins. Why? Because the runners bring differing skills, abilities, training and may apply different effort. The race is fair, even if the outcome varies. Who'd run if everybody got the same trophy? (That's the issue with socialism, there is no incentive to make an effort)

Welp my fault for clicking through the preview. People really must get their fair share, though.

What about just ensuring that people get their fair share?

A fair wage, fair hours, and a fair share. Once again, we must offer the American people a new deal; Hell, it's about time!

Corporate interests don't run the government; an incompetent party which believes taking money from the consumer and letting it trickle back down runs the government. The GOP genuinely believes they're doing great work for the American people.

Let that sink in.

Clearly, we could do better than the GOP tax plan; yet they believe it's the best. Does that not frighten a man to contemplate?

I wanted to run because I want to pull the Democratic party back to a path of sanity--back to something like FDR showed us in a party. What did I find when I started running? Many candidates and active politicians at state, local, and even Federal levels complaining that the Democratic party has no real leadership. Other people keep saying it before I do.

The Democrats need to remember they're not the Anti-Republicans and don't have to do everything to distinguish themselves from Republicans. They need to work toward the needs of Americans. Franklin D. Roosevelt said Americans deserve increased certainty of employment at a reasonable wage, and that American enterprise deserves a fair profit; and because the Republicans want to give business everything in the world at the expense of the working man, the Democrats have allowed themselves a casual stance of making business bleed because it's good politics. Does that sound like they care about the working man, or just the working man's vote?

I say, today, the American people deserve security in their lives and livelihood: they need a safety net under them. We should strive toward a fair wage, fair hours, and a fair share. Businesses can have a fair profit--so long as they pay their fair share.

The rich are of no concern; the 40 million Americans who cannot consistently find food, the over half-a-million who have no homes, those are our concern. High taxes are not an ends, not a goal to pursue; we must pursue an end to poverty and a levy of fairness to the working man.

Let's start by looking again at this GOP tax plan, and what we can do better. We can unify our anti-poverty efforts on the basis of a Universal Dividend, thus putting an end to homelessness and hunger in this country while reducing the tax burden by $600 billion. We can supply a public healthcare option for perhaps $200 billion, and take steps to slim that--perhaps even to the point that the new cost of Medicare and the public option together are lower than Medicare and Medicaid today, especially if we can bring down the price of generic prescription drugs and improve Medicare's method of price negotiation.

These efforts stabilize social security, reduce poverty, and give Americans a fair share tied to America's productivity. They reduce the tax burden, and even reduce spending. They even open an opportunity to reduce taxes on the wealthy, corporate income taxes, and even the regressive payroll tax--although corporate income taxes must always include paying into the Universal Dividend, so as to ensure capture of that fair share of GDP which we distribute to the American people.

How strong can the Republican party hold against a Democratic party which focuses on what the American people need, which exercises fiscal responsibility, and which doesn't wage needless blood war against the wealthy and the American enterprise? Much of the ideological basis of Republican support falls away.

Let's not forget the practical matters, either. Of $2,656 billion of Federal revenue brought by payroll and FICA, a 35% corporate tax rate brought $299.6 billion in 2016. With my Universal Dividend, it pays part of that into the Dividend itself, leaving only $168 billion. Gnawing away at that by the $5 and $10 billions ca

Corporate interests don't run the government; an incompetent party which believes taking money from the consumer and letting it trickle back down runs the government. The GOP genuinely believes they're doing great work for the American people.

Let that sink in.

Clearly, we could do better than the GOP tax plan; yet they believe it's the best. Does that not frighten a man to contemplate?

I wanted to run because I want to pull the Democratic party back to a path of sanity--back to something like FDR showed us in a party. What did I find when I started running? Many candidates and active politicians at state, local, and even Federal levels complaining that the Democratic party has no real leadership. Other people keep saying it before I do.

The Democrats need to remember they're not the Anti-Republicans and don't have to do everything to distinguish themselves from Republicans. They need to work toward the needs of Americans. Franklin D. Roosevelt said Americans deserve increased certainty of employment at a reasonable wage, and that American enterprise deserves a fair profit; and because the Republicans want to give business everything in the world at the expense of the working man, the Democrats have allowed themselves a casual stance of making business bleed because it's good politics. Does that sound like they care about the working man, or just the working man's vote?

I say, today, the American people deserve security in their lives and livelihood: they need a safety net under them. We should strive toward a fair wage, fair hours, and a fair share. Businesses can have a fair profit--so long as they pay their fair share.

The rich are of no concern; the 40 million Americans who cannot consistently find food, the over half-a-million who have no homes, those are our concern. High taxes are not an ends, not a goal to pursue; we must pursue an end to poverty and a levy of fairness to the working man.

Let's start by looking again at this GOP tax plan, and what we can do better. We can unify our anti-poverty efforts on the basis of a Universal Dividend, thus putting an end to homelessness and hunger in this country while reducing the tax burden by $600 billion. We can supply a public healthcare option for perhaps $200 billion, and take steps to slim that--perhaps even to the point that the new cost of Medicare and the public option together are lower than Medicare and Medicaid today, especially if we can bring down the price of generic prescription drugs and improve Medicare's method of price negotiation.

These efforts stabilize social security, reduce poverty, and give Americans a fair share tied to America's productivity. They reduce the tax burden, and even reduce spending. They even open an opportunity to reduce taxes on the wealthy, corporate income taxes, and even the regressive payroll tax--although corporate income taxes must always include paying into the Universal Dividend, so as to ensure capture of that fair share of GDP which we distribute to the American people.

How strong can the Republican party hold against a Democratic party which focuses on what the American people need, which exercises fiscal responsibility, and which doesn't wage needless blood war against the wealthy and the American enterprise? Much of the ideological basis of Republican support falls away.

Let's not forget the practical matters, either. Of $2,656 billion of Federal revenue brought by payroll and FICA, a 35% corporate tax rate brought $299.6 billion in 2016. With my Universal Dividend, it pays part of that into the Dividend itself, leaving only $168 billion. Gnawing away at that by the $5 and $10 billions ca

Corporate interests don't run the government; an incompetent party which believes taking money from the consumer and letting it trickle back down runs the government. The GOP genuinely believes they're doing great work for the American people.

Let that sink in.

Clearly, we could do better than the GOP tax plan; yet they believe it's the best. Does that not frighten a man to contemplate?

I wanted to run because I want to pull the Democratic party back to a path of sanity--back to something like FDR showed us in a party. What did I find when I started running? Many candidates and active politicians at state, local, and even Federal levels complaining that the Democratic party has no real leadership. Other people keep saying it before I do.

The Democrats need to remember they're not the Anti-Republicans and don't have to do everything to distinguish themselves from Republicans. They need to work toward the needs of Americans. Franklin D. Roosevelt said Americans deserve increased certainty of employment at a reasonable wage, and that American enterprise deserves a fair profit; and because the Republicans want to give business everything in the world at the expense of the working man, the Democrats have allowed themselves a casual stance of making business bleed because it's good politics. Does that sound like they care about the working man, or just the working man's vote?

I say, today, the American people deserve security in their lives and livelihood: they need a safety net under them. We should strive toward a fair wage, fair hours, and a fair share. Businesses can have a fair profit--so long as they pay their fair share.

The rich are of no concern; the 40 million Americans who cannot consistently find food, the over half-a-million who have no homes, those are our concern. High taxes are not an ends, not a goal to pursue; we must pursue an end to poverty and a levy of fairness to the working man.

Let's start by looking again at this GOP tax plan, and what we can do better. We can unify our anti-poverty efforts on the basis of a Universal Dividend, thus putting an end to homelessness and hunger in this country while reducing the tax burden by $600 billion. We can supply a public healthcare option for perhaps $200 billion, and take steps to slim that--perhaps even to the point that the new cost of Medicare and the public option together are lower than Medicare and Medicaid today, especially if we can bring down the price of generic prescription drugs and improve Medicare's method of price negotiation.

These efforts stabilize social security, reduce poverty, and give Americans a fair share tied to America's productivity. They reduce the tax burden, and even reduce spending. They even open an opportunity to reduce taxes on the wealthy, corporate income taxes, and even the regressive payroll tax--although corporate income taxes must always include paying into the Universal Dividend, so as to ensure capture of that fair share of GDP which we distribute to the American people.

How strong can the Republican party hold against a Democratic party which focuses on what the American people need, which exercises fiscal responsibility, and which doesn't wage needless blood war against the wealthy and the American enterprise? Much of the ideological basis of Republican support falls away.

Let's not forget the practical matters, either. Of $2,656 billion of Federal revenue brought by payroll and FICA, a 35% corporate tax rate brought $299.6 billion in 2016. With my Universal Dividend, it pays part of that into the Dividend itself, leaving only $168 billion. Gnawing away at that by the $5 and $10 billions ca

Corporate interests don't run the government; an incompetent party which believes taking money from the consumer and letting it trickle back down runs the government. The GOP genuinely believes they're doing great work for the American people.

Let that sink in.

Clearly, we could do better than the GOP tax plan; yet they believe it's the best. Does that not frighten a man to contemplate?

I wanted to run because I want to pull the Democratic party back to a path of sanity--back to something like FDR showed us in a party. What did I find when I started running? Many candidates and active politicians at state, local, and even Federal levels complaining that the Democratic party has no real leadership. Other people keep saying it before I do.

The Democrats need to remember they're not the Anti-Republicans and don't have to do everything to distinguish themselves from Republicans. They need to work toward the needs of Americans. Franklin D. Roosevelt said Americans deserve increased certainty of employment at a reasonable wage, and that American enterprise deserves a fair profit; and because the Republicans want to give business everything in the world at the expense of the working man, the Democrats have allowed themselves a casual stance of making business bleed because it's good politics. Does that sound like they care about the working man, or just the working man's vote?

I say, today, the American people deserve security in their lives and livelihood: they need a safety net under them. We should strive toward a fair wage, fair hours, and a fair share. Businesses can have a fair profit--so long as they pay their fair share.

The rich are of no concern; the 40 million Americans who cannot consistently find food, the over half-a-million who have no homes, those are our concern. High taxes are not an ends, not a goal to pursue; we must pursue an end to poverty and a levy of fairness to the working man.

Let's start by looking again at this GOP tax plan, and what we can do better. We can unify our anti-poverty efforts on the basis of a Universal Dividend, thus putting an end to homelessness and hunger in this country while reducing the tax burden by $600 billion. We can supply a public healthcare option for perhaps $200 billion, and take steps to slim that--perhaps even to the point that the new cost of Medicare and the public option together are lower than Medicare and Medicaid today, especially if we can bring down the price of generic prescription drugs and improve Medicare's method of price negotiation.

These efforts stabilize social security, reduce poverty, and give Americans a fair share tied to America's productivity. They reduce the tax burden, and even reduce spending. They even open an opportunity to reduce taxes on the wealthy, corporate income taxes, and even the regressive payroll tax--although corporate income taxes must always include paying into the Universal Dividend, so as to ensure capture of that fair share of GDP which we distribute to the American people.

How strong can the Republican party hold against a Democratic party which focuses on what the American people need, which exercises fiscal responsibility, and which doesn't wage needless blood war against the wealthy and the American enterprise? Much of the ideological basis of Republican support falls away.

Let's not forget the practical matters, either. Of $2,656 billion of Federal revenue brought by payroll and FICA, a 35% corporate tax rate brought $299.6 billion in 2016. With my Universal Dividend, it pays part of that into the Dividend itself, leaving only $168 billion. Gnawing away at that by the $5 and $10 billions ca

Okay, let me try instead. I'm running for House of Representatives in Maryland's 7th District, and I'm fairly-certain I can win that seat with under $50k--not that it'll be easy, but it's viable. If I can get $25/month commitments out of 100 people, I can probably fund out of my own pocket the rest of the way there; everything else is lifting the hardship off my personal finances and raising my chances of success.

My major platforms include an end to identity theft; a restructuring of welfare around a Universal Benefit (essentially a dividend of America's productivity) to lower the tax burden, totally-eliminate poverty, and guarantee Social Security's permanent solvency; and a public healthcare option to get healthcare to every American without excessive expense of a single-payer system.

I lean heavily toward fiscal responsibility, which is why my public healthcare option aims to narrow the $200 billion gap before levying any kind of tax to close it. With the $368B spending on Medicaid covering the poor, we could instead cover 55 million Americans with the average employer healthcare package, or 41 million Americans with zero-deductible healthcare.

With 70 million Americans without private insurance and an average of 50 million total coverage (with lower-incomes getting no out-of-pocket cost care), that's $185 billion in costs for the remaining full care coverage--although shuffling the numbers in different ways raises or lowers that a bit. Plans to provide a stronger employer healthcare mandate would reduce that price tag; plans to lower healthcare costs in general--such as by reducing generic drug costs--would also lower the cost of insurance. Both approaches mean any tax levied to cover this would be smaller.

As for identity theft, I plan on passing laws charging regulators to mandate the latest consumer-ready technology for credit issuance. That means low-cost, high-effectiveness. Today, that would be a FIDO U2F authentication with the CRAs: you go to a bank, show a hard ID (driver's license, passport, etc.), and plug your USB U2F device into a computer to establish a Trust relationship with each of the three CRAs.

That device holds a private encryption key (non-disclosed) used to sign challenges, so it becomes impossible to validate your identity with the CRAs unless you have the device itself--even if you hack the CRA and copy all the information they have about you. If you lose your key, voice-verification with the bank is sufficient to cancel the Trust: you can use your accounts, but can't open new ones until you physically enter a bank once. Otherwise, plug it into your computer or phone when you open a new credit account online so the bank can run a hard credit check with the CRAs.

Note that the details would be regulatory. Not only is this a good technical solution built in consideration of all identifiable risks, but it also minimizes the mandate by legislation: at most, I want to tell the regulators they must mandate feasible, inexpensive technology following any current standards on security as published by NIST. Note that NIST currently standardizes AES and Triple-DES for encryption, RSA and ECC for digital signatures, and so forth. The point is to ensure the regulation must deprecate an insecure technology when or before NIST says it's insecure, rather than exercising their own judgment.

Yes, I'm both a technologist (what a word) and a bureaucrat (I actually like project management more than technical work).

The Universal Benefit (which I might rename to Universal Dividend) is a foundation tying our entire anti-poverty system into one coherent effort. Essentially, I restructured the taxes to involve a 15% tax on all income (business and personal), which is paid out equally among all adults as if one adult represents one share

Okay, let me try instead. I'm running for House of Representatives in Maryland's 7th District, and I'm fairly-certain I can win that seat with under $50k--not that it'll be easy, but it's viable. If I can get $25/month commitments out of 100 people, I can probably fund out of my own pocket the rest of the way there; everything else is lifting the hardship off my personal finances and raising my chances of success.

My major platforms include an end to identity theft; a restructuring of welfare around a Universal Benefit (essentially a dividend of America's productivity) to lower the tax burden, totally-eliminate poverty, and guarantee Social Security's permanent solvency; and a public healthcare option to get healthcare to every American without excessive expense of a single-payer system.

I lean heavily toward fiscal responsibility, which is why my public healthcare option aims to narrow the $200 billion gap before levying any kind of tax to close it. With the $368B spending on Medicaid covering the poor, we could instead cover 55 million Americans with the average employer healthcare package, or 41 million Americans with zero-deductible healthcare.

With 70 million Americans without private insurance and an average of 50 million total coverage (with lower-incomes getting no out-of-pocket cost care), that's $185 billion in costs for the remaining full care coverage--although shuffling the numbers in different ways raises or lowers that a bit. Plans to provide a stronger employer healthcare mandate would reduce that price tag; plans to lower healthcare costs in general--such as by reducing generic drug costs--would also lower the cost of insurance. Both approaches mean any tax levied to cover this would be smaller.

As for identity theft, I plan on passing laws charging regulators to mandate the latest consumer-ready technology for credit issuance. That means low-cost, high-effectiveness. Today, that would be a FIDO U2F authentication with the CRAs: you go to a bank, show a hard ID (driver's license, passport, etc.), and plug your USB U2F device into a computer to establish a Trust relationship with each of the three CRAs.

That device holds a private encryption key (non-disclosed) used to sign challenges, so it becomes impossible to validate your identity with the CRAs unless you have the device itself--even if you hack the CRA and copy all the information they have about you. If you lose your key, voice-verification with the bank is sufficient to cancel the Trust: you can use your accounts, but can't open new ones until you physically enter a bank once. Otherwise, plug it into your computer or phone when you open a new credit account online so the bank can run a hard credit check with the CRAs.

Note that the details would be regulatory. Not only is this a good technical solution built in consideration of all identifiable risks, but it also minimizes the mandate by legislation: at most, I want to tell the regulators they must mandate feasible, inexpensive technology following any current standards on security as published by NIST. Note that NIST currently standardizes AES and Triple-DES for encryption, RSA and ECC for digital signatures, and so forth. The point is to ensure the regulation must deprecate an insecure technology when or before NIST says it's insecure, rather than exercising their own judgment.

Yes, I'm both a technologist (what a word) and a bureaucrat (I actually like project management more than technical work).

The Universal Benefit (which I might rename to Universal Dividend) is a foundation tying our entire anti-poverty system into one coherent effort. Essentially, I restructured the taxes to involve a 15% tax on all income (business and personal), which is paid out equally among all adults as if one adult represents one share

I specify that Congress should make broad legislation allowing a regulatory agency to select the most-appropriate, affordable, and effective technology of today; and today, that is the FIDO U2F Security key with RSA or ECC encryption. That's how I'm going to defeat identity theft once and for all.

one of the party's central tenets is low taxes on business lead to better outcomes for the country. These sorts of tax breaks are exactly what they stand for.

Without the tax subsidies, solar is cheaper than combined gas cycle--which is insanely low-cost. It's time to let the invisible hand sort it out. Maybe reduce subsidies slowly, sure, but it's time.

Bear in mind I'm pulling an FDR and slapping my own party with the large fact that income plus FICA totals $2,656 billion of revenue in 2016, while 35% tax on corporate profits totals $299.6 billion. Roosevelt said that workers want security in the permanence of their employment, security of their savings, and a fair wage; he also said businesses deserve a fair profit--and that profit is measured in percentages, not in dollars.

The Republicans like to talk about creating jobs by repealing these corporate taxes, but you're thinking payroll taxes; repealing these corporate taxes creates agility: when the economy changes (technology, consumer demand) and layoffs come, constricting the cash flow prevents businesses from changing and replacing those lost jobs as quickly. It hardly impacts the number of standing jobs in a stable economy; the high business income tax just makes recessions peak harder and linger longer.

The keystone to my New Deal legislation is a Universal Benefit, around which we restructure our anti-poverty systems to provide a strong basis of social security. This immediately guarantees solvency of the Social Security pensions programs; and it provides a basis for our welfare programs, strengthening them and filling in the gaps where they fail entirely today.

Every individual adult receives just slightly more income than the eligibility limits for Supplemental Security Income, so that program goes away entirely. The Earned Income Tax Credit is weakened, thanks to this infusion of unearned income reducing the eligibility of many households. OASDI only fills the gap between the Universal benefit and the calculated cost-of-living adjustment of these benefits, hence its immediate solvency. WIC, SNAP, HUD, and all other programs follow the same model as SSI and EITC, using their usual benefits computation, and carry a decreased burden thanks to the sudden increase in unearned income received by every household.

In 2016, that would have conveyed around $8,751 per year--$729 each month in two payments--to each adult. A two-adult household starts at $17,502 of untaxed, unearned income; combined with wages, this has the above impacts on the welfare system.

The change in taxes means business taxes shift from 35% to 34.6%, taken as 15% for the Universal benefit and 19.6% for the general fund--a mere $168 billion collected. Striking this 19.6% is an achievable goal, and one which aligns more with the philosophy of Franklin D. Roosevelt than with Bernie Sanders; yet who can really say that a tax on the corporate income is an effective revenue source? My Universal Benefit collects and distributes a fair share out of all of the productive income in the nation; a general tax on the business income merely reduces the agility of our nation's enterprise to respond to change, while providing little general revenue.

In the long term, the FICA tax required to support Social Security's full OASDI benefits at correctly-adjusted, CPI-based cost-of-living will fall, due to my Universal Benefit growing faster than the cost-of-living adjustment today. This reduces payroll tax, which is factored directly into price, further increasing the working-class American's buying power. This has a much-greater impact on jobs and the stability thereof, yet we cannot take this approach today because we will lose the fiscal capacity to meet the promises of our Social Security system--promises to wh

one of the party's central tenets is low taxes on business lead to better outcomes for the country. These sorts of tax breaks are exactly what they stand for.

Without the tax subsidies, solar is cheaper than combined gas cycle--which is insanely low-cost. It's time to let the invisible hand sort it out. Maybe reduce subsidies slowly, sure, but it's time.

Bear in mind I'm pulling an FDR and slapping my own party with the large fact that income plus FICA totals $2,656 billion of revenue in 2016, while 35% tax on corporate profits totals $299.6 billion. Roosevelt said that workers want security in the permanence of their employment, security of their savings, and a fair wage; he also said businesses deserve a fair profit--and that profit is measured in percentages, not in dollars.

The Republicans like to talk about creating jobs by repealing these corporate taxes, but you're thinking payroll taxes; repealing these corporate taxes creates agility: when the economy changes (technology, consumer demand) and layoffs come, constricting the cash flow prevents businesses from changing and replacing those lost jobs as quickly. It hardly impacts the number of standing jobs in a stable economy; the high business income tax just makes recessions peak harder and linger longer.

The keystone to my New Deal legislation is a Universal Benefit, around which we restructure our anti-poverty systems to provide a strong basis of social security. This immediately guarantees solvency of the Social Security pensions programs; and it provides a basis for our welfare programs, strengthening them and filling in the gaps where they fail entirely today.

Every individual adult receives just slightly more income than the eligibility limits for Supplemental Security Income, so that program goes away entirely. The Earned Income Tax Credit is weakened, thanks to this infusion of unearned income reducing the eligibility of many households. OASDI only fills the gap between the Universal benefit and the calculated cost-of-living adjustment of these benefits, hence its immediate solvency. WIC, SNAP, HUD, and all other programs follow the same model as SSI and EITC, using their usual benefits computation, and carry a decreased burden thanks to the sudden increase in unearned income received by every household.

In 2016, that would have conveyed around $8,751 per year--$729 each month in two payments--to each adult. A two-adult household starts at $17,502 of untaxed, unearned income; combined with wages, this has the above impacts on the welfare system.

The change in taxes means business taxes shift from 35% to 34.6%, taken as 15% for the Universal benefit and 19.6% for the general fund--a mere $168 billion collected. Striking this 19.6% is an achievable goal, and one which aligns more with the philosophy of Franklin D. Roosevelt than with Bernie Sanders; yet who can really say that a tax on the corporate income is an effective revenue source? My Universal Benefit collects and distributes a fair share out of all of the productive income in the nation; a general tax on the business income merely reduces the agility of our nation's enterprise to respond to change, while providing little general revenue.

In the long term, the FICA tax required to support Social Security's full OASDI benefits at correctly-adjusted, CPI-based cost-of-living will fall, due to my Universal Benefit growing faster than the cost-of-living adjustment today. This reduces payroll tax, which is factored directly into price, further increasing the working-class American's buying power. This has a much-greater impact on jobs and the stability thereof, yet we cannot take this approach today because we will lose the fiscal capacity to meet the promises of our Social Security system--promises to wh

Hell it's about time. I put this up as soon as this happened. FIDO is the way to go for validation.

Yeah well, nobody up there is doing it right.

My decades around hackers and nerds allows me to intuit that she is a manager and not a true technical person. Just from her stupid haircut.

You could also intuit that I'm a politician from my $800 suit. I'm also my Campaign Committee's chair, treasurer, accountant, chief technology officer, Web designer (could you tell?), content writer, speech writer, publicist, campaign strategist, information security officer, lawyer, and secretary.

I happen to like train wrecks. Why work at a place that's well put together when you could be rebuilding a nation? I've pushed back against management, pointed out enormous operational flaws, and gotten myself counseled for saying unpleasant things about the state of an employer here and there when they'd rather I just do what they tell me. They eventually get back in line, and the organization straightens itself out--to miraculous effect. Sitting around and coasting is boring.

Why wouldn't you want to work for a disaster employer?

Perhaps the most attractive thing about being a Congressman is I get to tell all my coworkers--you know, Congress--exactly what's wrong and keep telling them long after they're tired of hearing it, and the only people who can actually fire me are the voters. Nobody can complain to HR that I'm "not a team player" because I'm annoying. Sure, you still need to play by the rules of human behavior and get buy-in, be diplomatic, and all that; but so does everyone else. In a corporation, the moment they get bored of the game, they start ignoring you, then realize you're impossible to ignore and start complaining to management; in Congress, they have to let you talk, then deal with the Media telling the whole goddamned country what you said, and then they have to deal with their own constituents. You can actually keep pushing on the issues that need to be pushed when doing so can get you buy-in, without worrying that one or two of the people you're never going to win over will call your manager to complain.

If you want to do that but you aren't going for officer of some legislative body, go for officer of some hilariously fucked-up corporation. If you want to be boring, get a job somewhere that doesn't need you to straighten their shit out.

Well, we could have a share of ownership.

I structured the Universal Benefit in my Universal Social Security framework as a dividend from the economy: every adult holds one equal share in the United States economy, and receives an equal proportion of the Universal Benefit’s tax rate—which I’ve proposed at 15%.

Although the taxes are higher than I'd hoped. I've got plans for that, too:

Minimum Rate — The rate resulting in a benefit half-way between the CPI-adjusted cost-of-living increase, and no lower than 10%; [...]

[...]If the Minimum Rate is above the current Universal Benefit tax rate, then the Social Security Administration must not adjust the Universal Benefit tax rate.[...]

[...]The Social Security Administration may, at its discretion, reduce the Universal Benefit tax rate by any rate between the Mandatory Minimum Adjustment and that which achieves the Minimum Rate. For example: if the Minimum Rate 14.9% coming from 15%, then the Social Security Administration may set any rate between 14.975% and 14.9%.

That will eventually lower the tax rate (at every tax bracket and on businesses) by 5%, and it will guarantee at least half of the productivity growth distributed without adjustment in any given year is distributed after adjustment. I need to stipulate that the COLA figure is continuous across years without adjustment: if the economy is down and COLA is higher than the benefit, then the next year's COLA is based on the current year's COLA figure and not on the current year's actual benefit. We rebase to the actual benefit when the economy catches back up--when the benefit exceeds the cumulative COLA.

The whole idea is to make sure no reduction in tax rate results in a reduction in buying power of the benefit year to year--the buying power must always grow. Americans deserve a fair share of productivity gains; after all, we gain productivity by laying people off, and don't we owe you compensation for the risk?