You're always welcome to bid to the city to put in your own electrical infrastructure to sell your excess power through and maintain it in rain and shine, meter people's usage, do the billing and all. While they are probably making a profit, it's hardly a racket.
While I'm sure he would bring the troops home (or at least a substantial fraction of them who are actually stationed on foreign bases) after listening to arguments pro and con from the leaders of the armed forces, I'm not sure he'd pull in the spy network.
As far as Israel is concerned, I also doubt he would stand in the way of selling munitions to our allies. It's the actual going to war and fighting ourselves that he's down on as I read his statements.
There are many executive office functions that we definitely need and they need to exist at the federal level. We should definitely have smarter government. The only problem is the smartest don't want the jobs because the pay is lower (although the benefits may help equal that out if you stay in long enough - tough to beat stock options though - although I've never worked anywhere that offered those). But you should look up a list of all the government departments and agencies that exist. Surely, we can do without some of them.
While I agree with your point about more regulatory agencies - if a particular state chooses to regulate a particular activity - I think you miss the essential point. If decisions that have no constitutional basis are left at the state level and not promoted to or addressed at the federal level, I have more say and influence in adjusting the state laws to suit me (as does everyone else for their respective states) than I do at the federal level. If the state refuses to change existing laws or passes laws I don't agree with in a strong way, I have perhaps 49 other states to chose to live in that might have laws more to my liking, yet will still enjoy being a citizen of the United States. If the law is federal, you're stuck with it wherever you live in the United States.
I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of the things that are getting people riled up wouldn't involve regulation other than by police forces. Few are complaining about the FCC or the ICC or the other multi-state workhorses and their desire for uniformity. The complaints noted in the threads are about abortion, drug use, marriage laws, and kid's education to cite a few. These would be regulated by the state's existing judicial branch if the states passed laws about them, wouldn't need any regulation at all if they were made legal in some cases, or are already handled in parallel with the federal government in the case of education.
For the record, I think Ron Paul would be great. I think that roughly 0% or maybe slightly higher of his ideas would become law since they require the Congress to act in order to accomplish it. That's why I don't worry a lot about some of the things he thinks should be done.
He could cut back the spreading executive branch and it's departments without much congressional interference and that would help some. Some of their work would devolve to the states, some would be shifted to other departments, and some of it would just not get done any more and probably nobody would miss it except the people doing it now. It would be refreshing for a change for a President to ask Congress to pass a war resolution before going to war, and RP would obey the constitution. I know they all promise they will, including the Congressmen, but they stretch it well past thin. It would also be refreshing to have a President who would veto the morass of legislation that comes his way that has unconstitutional bits and pieces inserted in "must pass" legislation. I'm pretty sure that given RP's congressional record, he'd be happy to do that.
WIkipedia - costs of Iraq war - latest Brown University estimates are 3.2 to 4 trillion dollars for combined Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan war effort. So, about $400 billion per year. This does not count the costs to other countries - that is just U.S. costs. The estimate offered before starting the first one - $100 billion for a two year effort. Afford it? It's easier now, while interest rates are low. It'll be more difficult once interest rates start increasing. The increased debt service will be substantial. The disruption to the labor force in the U.S. with so many reservists called up was real. So were the effects in long term disabilities or deaths to our soldiers and their families.
Regardless of whether you agree on whether it is affordable or not, it is just plain wrong. You've got a bunch of people who have hated each other for several thousand years, and our sticking our noses in their affairs won't solve anything in the long run, and will increase our long term defense costs and increase the probability of retaliation at home or abroad. This is what RP objects to.
If you want to know where to send your kids to elementary school, get to know some junior high or middle school teachers and find out which elementary students are best prepared for junior high or middle school. You can do the same thing at high school if you need but the choice of the middle grades is less important than elementary. Obviously, you need to know the teacher making the comments, but the teachers I know will give you an honest opinion if you ask. You may have to cut through some bureaucratic double speak.
Obviously this really doesn't matter if you don't have open enrollment. If you don't, then you have to decide where to live first as that will determine everything else.
This isn't a guarantee. The teacher that was doing a great job might leave or retire. Several might get fed up with the administration and leave. Great new teachers might transfer in somewhere else. But it will give a general overview as a starting point.
One of our elementary schools decided to try a radical new approach to teaching. Everything would be electronic. No books. The kids hated it. The school system is still trying to give it a chance - bureaucracy and institutional inertia being what it is. Few enroll there since it isn't working and they can't understand why.
All parents should be involved in their kid's education and should pick up the slack teaching concepts the kids aren't getting at school. Having said that, I'm a firm believer that home schooling is the wrong approach for 90% of the kids and parents who try it. It gets worse the more kids you have and the higher the grade level you try to teach.
My wife and I have four degrees between us, but you can't be an expert in enough things to teach them all subjects well. Trying to teach multiple kids at the same time holds the older kids back (but may help the young ones). Worst, if you can't actually teach or one of your kids just doesn't connect with you as a teacher, they are doomed. At least a bad public school teacher is just for one course or one year at the most. If they're all bad, find a way to go private or move someplace where the schools are good.
My last pieces of advice - make sure to get your children's eyesight tested if there is any doubt. Make sure their eyes track properly (take a pencil and slowly move it towards their nose and then from side to side a few times watching their eyes to make sure they track smoothly). Make sure they hear. Make sure they attend school. Check on their performance and keep them working. Help them to develop a love of books and reading - it will do them a world of good in school and in life as well. Get your noses out of your cell phones and video games yourselves and demonstrate good traits yourself to your kids.
Some others to consider - http://www.convoyofhope.org/ uses its donations to help feed children and help in disasters. Their website reports administration expenses of 5% and fund raising expenses of 6% of donations in 2010. 89% of donations go toward food, with corporate food donations matching at a 7 to 1 ratio at last report. Every dollar donated provides seven dollars of food.
If you want something more personal, http://www.missionofmercy.org/ provides sponsorship of individual children around the world. This organization has a Christian focus, but also provides education, nutrition and health monitoring services for sponsored kids (40,000 kids in 16 countries). Their goal is an 80% donation rate - last stats were 84%.
Support your local shelters for abused children or spouses.
Donate through local churches. For most main-line denominational churches, the local staff salary is supported by the local members and attendees. Any money that comes in that is ear-marked for a particular purpose that the church supports will go 100% to that purpose. Just call to see what is available as an avenue through each church.
Our local church provides a food bank, for example, and provides toys, school supplies, and other gifts for local school children or families that are in need. If you don't know of anyone yourself who is in need, you can be sure that local churches have been contacted routinely by those who need help. Some churches in town collect items and take them directly to elementary schools for the office to distribute to kids that don't have winter coats, shoes, or the like. Your donations to the church for local relief programs can make a direct difference in your community with virtually no overhead at any good sized church. Most also have guest speakers over the course of the year who are active in doing relief work as missionaries. They are spreading the gospel, but many are also helping to provide clean water by digging wells and providing pumps, helping with medical training, and many other things while doing their first calling.
In addition, all major denominations have relief and outreach organizations associated with them. You can send earmarked money directly to these organizations and know that a high percentage of the donation - 100% in some cases - will be used to reach those in need, whether in the United States or around the world. http://ag.org/ - Assemblies of God - for example lists Center for the Blind, Compassion Link, Convoy of Hope, Global HIV/AIDS, and Healthcare ministries. Regardless of your opinions on mixing religion and relief, if you aren't willing to do any relief yourself, you should consider donating to those who are at least trying to make a difference, even if not in the way you would do it, if you ever did.
The Fujifilm HS10 and HS20EXR aren't bad cameras either. They come with 30x lenses and have manual zoom. I really prefer the manual zoom to the powered zoom on my wife's Canon P/S. They're a great camera for most situations except low light w/o flash. The 20 is supposedly better than the 10 for these situations. I'd buy my HS10 again and am considering an upgrade to a 20. It's really nice to not have to carry around two or three lenses to cover the range of shots you'd like to take. There are a couple of other super zooms that do slightly better at the far tele part of the range for detail, and an SLR with a nice lens would do even better, but for general pixel exposure, they are a great learning camera without the cost of a serious SLR. You can use filters and add a 2x adapter on the lens if you want - and have a solid base to use to reduce shake if you use 2x + max tele.
I partially agree with you. Each state will have a slightly larger bureaucracy than they do now. States with the most concerns in a particular area might have a bigger cost increase than those which don't value the area as much. The people of certain states will likely see nothing that is done in a particular department that is of benefit to them and will potentially save a lot of money because they simply won't duplicate the functions. This is particularly true in Western states with respect to the BLM.
The local tax burden will likely be larger. The amount of the increase would be open to debate, as I think there is overlap in function between the federal and state departments that could disappear without any loss to the public. The actual people in the field at the federal level - the park rangers, the custodians of the monuments, and all those folks could be hired by the states - perhaps with less in benefits - but the total number of workers at that level would be similar. The wages and benefits of these jobs would increase the state tax burden but wouldn't be duplicated for each state. The larger number of employees would increase the state administrative burden for the affected departments, but there would be some savings there since there is already a management structure in place. There would be some increase in management at each state level, but some would simply disappear saving cost. Your cost of visiting parks and monuments might increase to pay for it, or perhaps the tax rate would increase to handle it. Eventually, after the deficit spending gets under control and we start whittling away at the debt itself, the federal tax burden should be reduced.
I don't think the issue is necessarily efficiency per se. I think that most people feel that there is much overlap in function that could be eliminated, making their view of the system more efficient even if the cost was higher for the nation due to some duplication across the states of some functions. I'll use the Department of Education as an example. Teachers, administrators, and school districts in my state would only have to worry about satisfying the requirement of their state Department of Education and not keeping the federal government happy as well. That will lead to more efficiency and less overhead than what we have now. The biggest advantage that I see is that local accountability would be increased. The closer the heads of departments and the departments themselves are to the people they are serving, the greater the accountability. Right now, I don't really think much of the federal bureaucracy really feels accountable to the public at all. The reductions in the paperwork alone would reduce the administrative costs to the state in this one department. Does anything that it is doing today need to be centralized? Texas and California - being the biggest textbook markets - largely dictate the materials people use for instruction. The teaching isn't going to change if the federal department (or the state for that matter) disappears overnight. Kids are still going to go to school and are still going to learn, whether the department is there or not.
We have this false sense that because the Department of Education exists, all is the same around the country. Sheer sophistry. People already make decisions about where to live based on the education their kids will get. There is a reason I am not in a huge metropolis and there is a reason many people have fled the inner city for the suburbs. There are reasons I don't live in particular Southern states. Regardless of how hard the Dept. tries, it can't equalize the education available to inner city kids and kids in private schools or between schools around the country. Parents will continue to take the education their children will receive into account when making job decisions whether or not the Dept. of Ed is around or not.
I do think there will be a tax hike if they closed most of the federal government down. The cost would be proportional to just how much they were able to close
I don't really think that particular bridge in question will support their oil industry in any fashion. The oil is on the northern slopes. The bridge was to be down where the people mostly are. Their oil industry is spawning enough cash flow which is returned to the people to afford their own bridge if they want one.
While I support everyone helping each other when possible, the problem we have is we are going far beyond our capacity to help each other with the resources at hand. We're borrowing money at a tremendous clip to help not just each other but the entire world and putting the burden of paying for it on the backs of our children and many generations to come. This is where the problem is at. Nobody that I know of has objections to the Federal government providing needed functions, and even a few luxuries when times are good. We don't even object to some borrowing if times are tough. It is the continuous deficit spending with no credible plan to ever pay it back that bothers us.
I fully agree that the primary fault is with Congress and not with the executive branch. The executive branch really only has the choice of not declaring so many wars - which both parties seem to have a problem with of late, and of using the veto to try to roll back Congressional excesses - which neither party has been willing to do enough of. While it would be nice to fantasize that the Executive Branch could provide some leadership and vision in the process, it has been so long since Congress paid any attention that everyone considers it a pointless exercise. Presidential budgets are routinely declared dead on arrival. At least Ron Paul would be likely to use the veto more often to force Congress to stay within its Constitutional bounds or to use the override to pass something that he opposed. That is more than I expect of any of the mainstream candidates.
I think that our main problem with the Dept. of Education is that we feel that the standards are established and unified to a large degree at this point in time, but that like every government agency that has been created to deal with a problem, they never disappear when the problem is taken care of. I don't consider the Federal Department of Education to be doing anything of use in the education of my kids. The state department of education is fine, and the local teachers are doing fine, but the federal government? Bah.
I'd say that Article IV/Section 4/Paragraph 2 would be more likely to give them the authority to purchase and administer territorial land. After that land becomes a state though, I'd stand by what I said about federal authority being limited to military installations in states as being the original intention of the authors once statehood was granted.
The framers original intention doesn't cause much more pause than a speed bump if the government wants things a certain way though.
Presidents do mostly get to just sign or refuse to sign legislation that Congress sends them. The thing about RP is this. He has balked signing (voting in his case) any legislation that doesn't pass constitutional muster, without regard to whether it came from the Democrats or Republicans. His party - the Republicans - don't like him because he won't play ball and vote the way they want him to for the "good" of the party.
There is some legislation that might have a hard time mustering the votes for a veto override. So by not signing the funding bills - perhaps not signing an omnibus bill and forcing Congress to actually do its job and send individual bills that are germane to one topic to his desk rather than using the now obligatory must pass rider approach - he just might be able to cause a change in how things are done even if Congress is against him. I suspect there are few bills he doesn't like or doesn't feel are right that he will sign, regardless of "must pass" aspects.
The Congress may be considerably different as well - their approval rankings are disasters. RP won't have any trouble communicating with the American people exactly why he rejected a piece of legislation. It is up to the American people to hold their Congress accountable now, and it will be no matter who is elected president. I'd rather have somebody at the top who was willing to veto legislative garbage than someone who would smile and do what their party wanted.
I agree that FEMA could easily fit under the "general Welfare" clause. I simply feel that we would be better off if the states took care of their own people in trouble instead of relying on a national agency to do the work. It is one case where I respect the agency, but feel it is a state function. There are many other agencies that I simply have little or no respect for their function and existence at all.
I'd argue with your first point though. The "for the Erection of Forts, Magazines..." clearly points this clause as giving the government authority to purchase land to create military bases and control them. It doesn't stretch to the NPS.
The Californians, I'm sure, are benefiting from the water, oil, natural gas, coal, wind, and other natural resources that are produced in or come from many of those small rural states. We are interconnected in many ways that you don't usually think about. That doesn't mean we need to have as much federal government as we do. Move critical pieces of government agencies out of departments which are going to be closed down and move on.
Jesus was pretty clear that His followers should love and respect individuals. He was also pretty clear that His followers shouldn't judge. He was also pretty clear that God did still judge and some things people do were sin and would be judged. For the GP, dinosaurs do have a place in the world's time line, but it wasn't anywhere near Jesus day - you won't find that being taught anywhere, I'd bet. That it is taught by some in a post Adam fashion shows that many haven't read their own Bible very well. Christianity would be better off if we kept those basic concepts straight.
I agree that the various departments have different priorities and might take time to get to the place they are communicating well with each other. They don't communicate well now in different departments and this is to the detriment of the American people. This might force them to become better at it. The homes I suggested were examples and might not be the best fit - but their purpose is largely aligned on a macro level - protection of the U.S. people. Their methods of going about it are simply different. In some cases though, it would be better to have them aligned as there is overlap now between the two.
As other posters have mentioned, fixing the size of the bureaucracy needs to be addressed before lenders stop rolling over our increasing debt and the services stop completely. Nobody is saying the way is going to be smooth or public employees or elected officials are going to be happy.
The private sector has been dealing with these issues for years (corporate buyouts, different cultures, communication between high management and subsidiary companies that may not do something high management thinks of as critical). In both cases, there is streamlining at the high end where people are no longer needed and facilities can be combined. This is one of the places where there is savings. In addition in the private world, the new management may decide that some functions are not needed or important to their long term plan and sell the bits off that aren't needed or simply shut them down. The public sector has been largely immune from these types of disruptive changes. It's about time they found out that their ruts can indeed be climbed out of and they can continue to function if they get moved to different management.
I think the preamble "provide for the common defense" would cover NOAA. FEMA functions could be handled by states. You're right about the NPS though - let the states manage the national parks in their borders. Just because RP wants to get the federal government out of some functions doesn't necessarily imply the corporations get to take over the functions - although many customer facing services in parks are already contracted out to the private sector. In many cases the states already have bureaucracy in place that could handle them and could hire some of the displaced federal workers to take up the slack. Not everything has to have some nationalized leadership to still work.
Some of these things do fall to government to do - but it doesn't have to be the federal government. Why should a taxpayer in Florida help pay for a bridge in Alaska? Leave things to the states where stuff is located wherever possible and leave the federal government managing the constitutionally mandated functions. Lets leave federal government doing jobs that the majority of Americans would say fell under a particular mandate as well instead of stretching the commerce clause to its breaking point to find cover there for a new desired federal function. If something is really necessary for the federal government to do, there will be broad agreement as to what department it belongs in and why - from the constitution - the government should be doing it in the first place. If an agency makes you scratch your head, either to what department it should be in or why the government should be involved, then it should go away.
Browse through http://www.usa.gov/directory/federal/index.shtml sometime and see just what all is out there that they list. Most of them would find a constitutional mandate, but some are very questionable and all that do need to exist could find a home in other existing departments and cut down on the bureaucracy (and politics) if they were in a department that Ron Paul was looking to axe.
The functions of NOAA could easily be considered as a national defense issue and moved to the Department of Defense. So could the CDC or a few other critical pieces of government. Any necessary agency can find a home. If you move the portions of government that have been placed in odd departments out of them and to where they make sense, you really start to see just how much of a waste some of the other departments are.
Energy research can be done by corporations. Parks can be managed by the states they are located in - all of them have recreation departments of their own. The same is true of monuments. Public education is already managed by states. There is no need for any federal bureaucracy there AT ALL. Low income housing doesn't disappear because a federal government disappears. Let the housing be managed by each state where it resides. Let states fix roads and bridges directly with the gas tax. And so on and so on. There are a few departments that we do need, and they would continue to exist although their direction would be changed by Ron Paul. Many should have disappeared long ago.
There are many niches in several huge departments that need saved. I suspect that Ron Paul would agree with that. Roll these few small portions over into some other existing department that has some constitutional basis for existing and let it be managed from there without the entire overhead of a full department structure. Return control of all the rest to the states where they belong. If individual states feel the services were worth it, they can create their own departments (if they don't already exist) and hire the federal workers. Perhaps some federal workers can be hired into existing state departments. If they have no constitutional basis for existing at the federal level - GET RID OF THEM.
Neither majority party will allow a candidate to be nominated who wants this at the Presidential level. Occasionally one slips into Congress - like Ron Paul - but neither his own party nor the Democrats like him much there either.
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You're always welcome to bid to the city to put in your own electrical infrastructure to sell your excess power through and maintain it in rain and shine, meter people's usage, do the billing and all. While they are probably making a profit, it's hardly a racket.
While I'm sure he would bring the troops home (or at least a substantial fraction of them who are actually stationed on foreign bases) after listening to arguments pro and con from the leaders of the armed forces, I'm not sure he'd pull in the spy network.
As far as Israel is concerned, I also doubt he would stand in the way of selling munitions to our allies. It's the actual going to war and fighting ourselves that he's down on as I read his statements.
There are many executive office functions that we definitely need and they need to exist at the federal level. We should definitely have smarter government. The only problem is the smartest don't want the jobs because the pay is lower (although the benefits may help equal that out if you stay in long enough - tough to beat stock options though - although I've never worked anywhere that offered those). But you should look up a list of all the government departments and agencies that exist. Surely, we can do without some of them.
While I agree with your point about more regulatory agencies - if a particular state chooses to regulate a particular activity - I think you miss the essential point. If decisions that have no constitutional basis are left at the state level and not promoted to or addressed at the federal level, I have more say and influence in adjusting the state laws to suit me (as does everyone else for their respective states) than I do at the federal level. If the state refuses to change existing laws or passes laws I don't agree with in a strong way, I have perhaps 49 other states to chose to live in that might have laws more to my liking, yet will still enjoy being a citizen of the United States. If the law is federal, you're stuck with it wherever you live in the United States.
I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of the things that are getting people riled up wouldn't involve regulation other than by police forces. Few are complaining about the FCC or the ICC or the other multi-state workhorses and their desire for uniformity. The complaints noted in the threads are about abortion, drug use, marriage laws, and kid's education to cite a few. These would be regulated by the state's existing judicial branch if the states passed laws about them, wouldn't need any regulation at all if they were made legal in some cases, or are already handled in parallel with the federal government in the case of education.
For the record, I think Ron Paul would be great. I think that roughly 0% or maybe slightly higher of his ideas would become law since they require the Congress to act in order to accomplish it. That's why I don't worry a lot about some of the things he thinks should be done.
He could cut back the spreading executive branch and it's departments without much congressional interference and that would help some. Some of their work would devolve to the states, some would be shifted to other departments, and some of it would just not get done any more and probably nobody would miss it except the people doing it now. It would be refreshing for a change for a President to ask Congress to pass a war resolution before going to war, and RP would obey the constitution. I know they all promise they will, including the Congressmen, but they stretch it well past thin. It would also be refreshing to have a President who would veto the morass of legislation that comes his way that has unconstitutional bits and pieces inserted in "must pass" legislation. I'm pretty sure that given RP's congressional record, he'd be happy to do that.
WIkipedia - costs of Iraq war - latest Brown University estimates are 3.2 to 4 trillion dollars for combined Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan war effort. So, about $400 billion per year. This does not count the costs to other countries - that is just U.S. costs. The estimate offered before starting the first one - $100 billion for a two year effort. Afford it? It's easier now, while interest rates are low. It'll be more difficult once interest rates start increasing. The increased debt service will be substantial. The disruption to the labor force in the U.S. with so many reservists called up was real. So were the effects in long term disabilities or deaths to our soldiers and their families.
Regardless of whether you agree on whether it is affordable or not, it is just plain wrong. You've got a bunch of people who have hated each other for several thousand years, and our sticking our noses in their affairs won't solve anything in the long run, and will increase our long term defense costs and increase the probability of retaliation at home or abroad. This is what RP objects to.
Cole's Axiom sums it up. The sum of the intelligence on the planet is a constant; the population is growing.
If you want to know where to send your kids to elementary school, get to know some junior high or middle school teachers and find out which elementary students are best prepared for junior high or middle school. You can do the same thing at high school if you need but the choice of the middle grades is less important than elementary. Obviously, you need to know the teacher making the comments, but the teachers I know will give you an honest opinion if you ask. You may have to cut through some bureaucratic double speak.
Obviously this really doesn't matter if you don't have open enrollment. If you don't, then you have to decide where to live first as that will determine everything else.
This isn't a guarantee. The teacher that was doing a great job might leave or retire. Several might get fed up with the administration and leave. Great new teachers might transfer in somewhere else. But it will give a general overview as a starting point.
One of our elementary schools decided to try a radical new approach to teaching. Everything would be electronic. No books. The kids hated it. The school system is still trying to give it a chance - bureaucracy and institutional inertia being what it is. Few enroll there since it isn't working and they can't understand why.
All parents should be involved in their kid's education and should pick up the slack teaching concepts the kids aren't getting at school. Having said that, I'm a firm believer that home schooling is the wrong approach for 90% of the kids and parents who try it. It gets worse the more kids you have and the higher the grade level you try to teach.
My wife and I have four degrees between us, but you can't be an expert in enough things to teach them all subjects well. Trying to teach multiple kids at the same time holds the older kids back (but may help the young ones). Worst, if you can't actually teach or one of your kids just doesn't connect with you as a teacher, they are doomed. At least a bad public school teacher is just for one course or one year at the most. If they're all bad, find a way to go private or move someplace where the schools are good.
My last pieces of advice - make sure to get your children's eyesight tested if there is any doubt. Make sure their eyes track properly (take a pencil and slowly move it towards their nose and then from side to side a few times watching their eyes to make sure they track smoothly). Make sure they hear. Make sure they attend school. Check on their performance and keep them working. Help them to develop a love of books and reading - it will do them a world of good in school and in life as well. Get your noses out of your cell phones and video games yourselves and demonstrate good traits yourself to your kids.
Some others to consider - http://www.convoyofhope.org/ uses its donations to help feed children and help in disasters. Their website reports administration expenses of 5% and fund raising expenses of 6% of donations in 2010. 89% of donations go toward food, with corporate food donations matching at a 7 to 1 ratio at last report. Every dollar donated provides seven dollars of food.
If you want something more personal, http://www.missionofmercy.org/ provides sponsorship of individual children around the world. This organization has a Christian focus, but also provides education, nutrition and health monitoring services for sponsored kids (40,000 kids in 16 countries). Their goal is an 80% donation rate - last stats were 84%.
Support your local shelters for abused children or spouses.
Donate through local churches. For most main-line denominational churches, the local staff salary is supported by the local members and attendees. Any money that comes in that is ear-marked for a particular purpose that the church supports will go 100% to that purpose. Just call to see what is available as an avenue through each church.
Our local church provides a food bank, for example, and provides toys, school supplies, and other gifts for local school children or families that are in need. If you don't know of anyone yourself who is in need, you can be sure that local churches have been contacted routinely by those who need help. Some churches in town collect items and take them directly to elementary schools for the office to distribute to kids that don't have winter coats, shoes, or the like. Your donations to the church for local relief programs can make a direct difference in your community with virtually no overhead at any good sized church. Most also have guest speakers over the course of the year who are active in doing relief work as missionaries. They are spreading the gospel, but many are also helping to provide clean water by digging wells and providing pumps, helping with medical training, and many other things while doing their first calling.
In addition, all major denominations have relief and outreach organizations associated with them. You can send earmarked money directly to these organizations and know that a high percentage of the donation - 100% in some cases - will be used to reach those in need, whether in the United States or around the world. http://ag.org/ - Assemblies of God - for example lists Center for the Blind, Compassion Link, Convoy of Hope, Global HIV/AIDS, and Healthcare ministries. Regardless of your opinions on mixing religion and relief, if you aren't willing to do any relief yourself, you should consider donating to those who are at least trying to make a difference, even if not in the way you would do it, if you ever did.
Seconded.
The Fujifilm HS10 and HS20EXR aren't bad cameras either. They come with 30x lenses and have manual zoom. I really prefer the manual zoom to the powered zoom on my wife's Canon P/S. They're a great camera for most situations except low light w/o flash. The 20 is supposedly better than the 10 for these situations. I'd buy my HS10 again and am considering an upgrade to a 20. It's really nice to not have to carry around two or three lenses to cover the range of shots you'd like to take. There are a couple of other super zooms that do slightly better at the far tele part of the range for detail, and an SLR with a nice lens would do even better, but for general pixel exposure, they are a great learning camera without the cost of a serious SLR. You can use filters and add a 2x adapter on the lens if you want - and have a solid base to use to reduce shake if you use 2x + max tele.
I partially agree with you. Each state will have a slightly larger bureaucracy than they do now. States with the most concerns in a particular area might have a bigger cost increase than those which don't value the area as much. The people of certain states will likely see nothing that is done in a particular department that is of benefit to them and will potentially save a lot of money because they simply won't duplicate the functions. This is particularly true in Western states with respect to the BLM.
The local tax burden will likely be larger. The amount of the increase would be open to debate, as I think there is overlap in function between the federal and state departments that could disappear without any loss to the public. The actual people in the field at the federal level - the park rangers, the custodians of the monuments, and all those folks could be hired by the states - perhaps with less in benefits - but the total number of workers at that level would be similar. The wages and benefits of these jobs would increase the state tax burden but wouldn't be duplicated for each state. The larger number of employees would increase the state administrative burden for the affected departments, but there would be some savings there since there is already a management structure in place. There would be some increase in management at each state level, but some would simply disappear saving cost. Your cost of visiting parks and monuments might increase to pay for it, or perhaps the tax rate would increase to handle it. Eventually, after the deficit spending gets under control and we start whittling away at the debt itself, the federal tax burden should be reduced.
I don't think the issue is necessarily efficiency per se. I think that most people feel that there is much overlap in function that could be eliminated, making their view of the system more efficient even if the cost was higher for the nation due to some duplication across the states of some functions. I'll use the Department of Education as an example. Teachers, administrators, and school districts in my state would only have to worry about satisfying the requirement of their state Department of Education and not keeping the federal government happy as well. That will lead to more efficiency and less overhead than what we have now. The biggest advantage that I see is that local accountability would be increased. The closer the heads of departments and the departments themselves are to the people they are serving, the greater the accountability. Right now, I don't really think much of the federal bureaucracy really feels accountable to the public at all. The reductions in the paperwork alone would reduce the administrative costs to the state in this one department. Does anything that it is doing today need to be centralized? Texas and California - being the biggest textbook markets - largely dictate the materials people use for instruction. The teaching isn't going to change if the federal department (or the state for that matter) disappears overnight. Kids are still going to go to school and are still going to learn, whether the department is there or not.
We have this false sense that because the Department of Education exists, all is the same around the country. Sheer sophistry. People already make decisions about where to live based on the education their kids will get. There is a reason I am not in a huge metropolis and there is a reason many people have fled the inner city for the suburbs. There are reasons I don't live in particular Southern states. Regardless of how hard the Dept. tries, it can't equalize the education available to inner city kids and kids in private schools or between schools around the country. Parents will continue to take the education their children will receive into account when making job decisions whether or not the Dept. of Ed is around or not.
I do think there will be a tax hike if they closed most of the federal government down. The cost would be proportional to just how much they were able to close
I don't really think that particular bridge in question will support their oil industry in any fashion. The oil is on the northern slopes. The bridge was to be down where the people mostly are. Their oil industry is spawning enough cash flow which is returned to the people to afford their own bridge if they want one.
While I support everyone helping each other when possible, the problem we have is we are going far beyond our capacity to help each other with the resources at hand. We're borrowing money at a tremendous clip to help not just each other but the entire world and putting the burden of paying for it on the backs of our children and many generations to come. This is where the problem is at. Nobody that I know of has objections to the Federal government providing needed functions, and even a few luxuries when times are good. We don't even object to some borrowing if times are tough. It is the continuous deficit spending with no credible plan to ever pay it back that bothers us.
I fully agree that the primary fault is with Congress and not with the executive branch. The executive branch really only has the choice of not declaring so many wars - which both parties seem to have a problem with of late, and of using the veto to try to roll back Congressional excesses - which neither party has been willing to do enough of. While it would be nice to fantasize that the Executive Branch could provide some leadership and vision in the process, it has been so long since Congress paid any attention that everyone considers it a pointless exercise. Presidential budgets are routinely declared dead on arrival. At least Ron Paul would be likely to use the veto more often to force Congress to stay within its Constitutional bounds or to use the override to pass something that he opposed. That is more than I expect of any of the mainstream candidates.
I think that our main problem with the Dept. of Education is that we feel that the standards are established and unified to a large degree at this point in time, but that like every government agency that has been created to deal with a problem, they never disappear when the problem is taken care of. I don't consider the Federal Department of Education to be doing anything of use in the education of my kids. The state department of education is fine, and the local teachers are doing fine, but the federal government? Bah.
I'd say that Article IV/Section 4/Paragraph 2 would be more likely to give them the authority to purchase and administer territorial land. After that land becomes a state though, I'd stand by what I said about federal authority being limited to military installations in states as being the original intention of the authors once statehood was granted.
The framers original intention doesn't cause much more pause than a speed bump if the government wants things a certain way though.
Presidents do mostly get to just sign or refuse to sign legislation that Congress sends them. The thing about RP is this. He has balked signing (voting in his case) any legislation that doesn't pass constitutional muster, without regard to whether it came from the Democrats or Republicans. His party - the Republicans - don't like him because he won't play ball and vote the way they want him to for the "good" of the party.
There is some legislation that might have a hard time mustering the votes for a veto override. So by not signing the funding bills - perhaps not signing an omnibus bill and forcing Congress to actually do its job and send individual bills that are germane to one topic to his desk rather than using the now obligatory must pass rider approach - he just might be able to cause a change in how things are done even if Congress is against him. I suspect there are few bills he doesn't like or doesn't feel are right that he will sign, regardless of "must pass" aspects.
The Congress may be considerably different as well - their approval rankings are disasters. RP won't have any trouble communicating with the American people exactly why he rejected a piece of legislation. It is up to the American people to hold their Congress accountable now, and it will be no matter who is elected president. I'd rather have somebody at the top who was willing to veto legislative garbage than someone who would smile and do what their party wanted.
I agree that FEMA could easily fit under the "general Welfare" clause. I simply feel that we would be better off if the states took care of their own people in trouble instead of relying on a national agency to do the work. It is one case where I respect the agency, but feel it is a state function. There are many other agencies that I simply have little or no respect for their function and existence at all.
I'd argue with your first point though. The "for the Erection of Forts, Magazines..." clearly points this clause as giving the government authority to purchase land to create military bases and control them. It doesn't stretch to the NPS.
I suspect the reason is that they have a strong constitutional basis for existence, even though they are expensive.
The Californians, I'm sure, are benefiting from the water, oil, natural gas, coal, wind, and other natural resources that are produced in or come from many of those small rural states. We are interconnected in many ways that you don't usually think about. That doesn't mean we need to have as much federal government as we do. Move critical pieces of government agencies out of departments which are going to be closed down and move on.
Jesus was pretty clear that His followers should love and respect individuals. He was also pretty clear that His followers shouldn't judge. He was also pretty clear that God did still judge and some things people do were sin and would be judged. For the GP, dinosaurs do have a place in the world's time line, but it wasn't anywhere near Jesus day - you won't find that being taught anywhere, I'd bet. That it is taught by some in a post Adam fashion shows that many haven't read their own Bible very well. Christianity would be better off if we kept those basic concepts straight.
I agree that the various departments have different priorities and might take time to get to the place they are communicating well with each other. They don't communicate well now in different departments and this is to the detriment of the American people. This might force them to become better at it. The homes I suggested were examples and might not be the best fit - but their purpose is largely aligned on a macro level - protection of the U.S. people. Their methods of going about it are simply different. In some cases though, it would be better to have them aligned as there is overlap now between the two.
As other posters have mentioned, fixing the size of the bureaucracy needs to be addressed before lenders stop rolling over our increasing debt and the services stop completely. Nobody is saying the way is going to be smooth or public employees or elected officials are going to be happy.
The private sector has been dealing with these issues for years (corporate buyouts, different cultures, communication between high management and subsidiary companies that may not do something high management thinks of as critical). In both cases, there is streamlining at the high end where people are no longer needed and facilities can be combined. This is one of the places where there is savings. In addition in the private world, the new management may decide that some functions are not needed or important to their long term plan and sell the bits off that aren't needed or simply shut them down. The public sector has been largely immune from these types of disruptive changes. It's about time they found out that their ruts can indeed be climbed out of and they can continue to function if they get moved to different management.
I think the preamble "provide for the common defense" would cover NOAA. FEMA functions could be handled by states. You're right about the NPS though - let the states manage the national parks in their borders. Just because RP wants to get the federal government out of some functions doesn't necessarily imply the corporations get to take over the functions - although many customer facing services in parks are already contracted out to the private sector. In many cases the states already have bureaucracy in place that could handle them and could hire some of the displaced federal workers to take up the slack. Not everything has to have some nationalized leadership to still work.
Some of these things do fall to government to do - but it doesn't have to be the federal government. Why should a taxpayer in Florida help pay for a bridge in Alaska? Leave things to the states where stuff is located wherever possible and leave the federal government managing the constitutionally mandated functions. Lets leave federal government doing jobs that the majority of Americans would say fell under a particular mandate as well instead of stretching the commerce clause to its breaking point to find cover there for a new desired federal function. If something is really necessary for the federal government to do, there will be broad agreement as to what department it belongs in and why - from the constitution - the government should be doing it in the first place. If an agency makes you scratch your head, either to what department it should be in or why the government should be involved, then it should go away.
Browse through http://www.usa.gov/directory/federal/index.shtml sometime and see just what all is out there that they list. Most of them would find a constitutional mandate, but some are very questionable and all that do need to exist could find a home in other existing departments and cut down on the bureaucracy (and politics) if they were in a department that Ron Paul was looking to axe.
The functions of NOAA could easily be considered as a national defense issue and moved to the Department of Defense. So could the CDC or a few other critical pieces of government. Any necessary agency can find a home. If you move the portions of government that have been placed in odd departments out of them and to where they make sense, you really start to see just how much of a waste some of the other departments are.
Energy research can be done by corporations. Parks can be managed by the states they are located in - all of them have recreation departments of their own. The same is true of monuments. Public education is already managed by states. There is no need for any federal bureaucracy there AT ALL. Low income housing doesn't disappear because a federal government disappears. Let the housing be managed by each state where it resides. Let states fix roads and bridges directly with the gas tax. And so on and so on. There are a few departments that we do need, and they would continue to exist although their direction would be changed by Ron Paul. Many should have disappeared long ago.
There are many niches in several huge departments that need saved. I suspect that Ron Paul would agree with that. Roll these few small portions over into some other existing department that has some constitutional basis for existing and let it be managed from there without the entire overhead of a full department structure. Return control of all the rest to the states where they belong. If individual states feel the services were worth it, they can create their own departments (if they don't already exist) and hire the federal workers. Perhaps some federal workers can be hired into existing state departments. If they have no constitutional basis for existing at the federal level - GET RID OF THEM.
Neither majority party will allow a candidate to be nominated who wants this at the Presidential level. Occasionally one slips into Congress - like Ron Paul - but neither his own party nor the Democrats like him much there either.