The 14th Amendment allows states to deny citizens the right to vote if they have been convicted of “participation in rebellion, or other crime”. Most states interpret “other crime” as having committed a felony. Currently, 48 states (with the exception being Vermont and Maine) exclude inmates from voting. 36 states exclude parolees, 31 exclude probationers, and 12 states permanently exclude those who have been convicted of felonies from the voting.
This policy can be used by corrupt politicians to ostracize different groups from the polls. For example: there is a higher ratio of black men in this country that have felony offences on their records than white men. If politicians wanted to exclude more Eskimos from voting they could make it no longer legal for them to hunt whales. Since Eskimos have to eat, and they get a large amount of their food from whales, they would most likely become a bunch of felons that wouldn’t even be able to elect representation to defend their side of the issue.
“Taxation without representation is tyranny” was a slogan that was used by the founders of this country when revolting against the unjust ruling England had over the colonies. Today there is approximately 5.3 million citizens in this country that are required by law to pay taxes, and because of their pasts they have no say in who the law makers of this country are.
If I were the Emperor of the United States, in the heart of establishing a true democracy, I would draft a new constitutional amendment that ensures that no citizen can be disenfranchised, that the right to vote is a life-long right.
Barbara Ciara reporting – Felony Voting Rights in VA -Part 1
Barbara Ciara reporting – Felony Voting Rights in VA -Part 2
I find it disheartening that during the current “three-ring-circus” of presidential campaigns, that the topic of education reform is rarely discussed. Every candidate, of course, is focusing their debates about what to they would like to do about the war, the economy, the environment, and a number of other frightening ghouls that haunt the American dream at night. Although drastic times do call for drastic measures, and the immediate situation does need immediate assistance, I think that it’s also important to plan for the future. The ultimate weapon against conflicts, famine, and even the destruction of our environment is education.
The FASFA (short for the Free Application For Federal Student Aid) is required do be filled out and submitted by all students who seek federal student aid for college. It is also used by most states to determine what kind of state level student aid a student is eligible for. The FASFA questions how much money a student has made in the last year. If the student is under 25 years old, it also asks about the student’s parents’ incomes from the previous year. This information is used to determine how much the family in question is expected to financially contribute towards the student’s college education. If the student’s parents have made too much money in the previous year, the student is not eligible for federal grants.
One problem with this system is that most people in America are not their parents’ financial dependents on through to the age of 25. It’s common for children to leave their parents nests at 18, soon after high school. Many young Americans receive absolutely no financial help from their parents at that point, and are being penalized, through this system, by their parents’ incomes. The FASFA asks for numerous bits of IRS tax information, but completely ignores whether or not the student is a legal dependent. If a student is not a legal dependent, what difference should it make as to whether their parent is Oliver Twist* or Donald Trump?
*It was really hard to think of a famous poor person by the way, so I ended up using Oliver Twist, who started off poor, but ended up rich and is a fictional character.
Another problem with this system is that the middle class (who collectively are the primary tax contributors, and thus are the ones who actually pay for these programs) gets screwed. Through this system, a poor family’s kids get most of their education paid for, a rich family has no problem affording college for their kids, and the middle class kids get to go to work, to pay taxes for the poor kids to get free education.
The reason for this discriminatory system is, as always, money. This system forces the majority of the population (all those middle class kids) into the workplace, where they can contribute taxes back to the government. It also attempts to break the chains of lower class families’ habits of living off government assistance generation after generation, so that they too can eventually pay taxes.
If I were the Emperor of the United States I would nurture the American dream by making available the educational tools required for its citizens to achieve their highest potentials. Right now our government has several traps in place to keep the common man down and the rich man rich. The FASFA is just one of them. It dictates that a citizen’s family background is still a very important factor in who “deserves” to go to college. If this country made higher education free to all citizens that have the aptitude and drive to pursue it, then yes, the social classes would change, but in a more natural way. This country would contain more citizens doing the things that they want to do and are good at. Of coarse we will always need the laborers, janitors, and factory workers to maintain our country, but who is working those positions should not be influenced by government policy. A higher education is becoming more and more necessary for the common man to thrive in today’s world of information highways. It’s also crucial for our citizens to be well educated if our country is to compete well with the rest of the world. I, for one, would be willing to cut funding on bombs to pay for books. If our country was to truly provide the opportunity for Americans to pursue their dreams through higher education, then the American dream would no longer be a dream, it would be a reality.
The most influential language used on Earth today is English. Although English (according to several polls and studies)is second to Mandarin Chinese in the amount of its native speakers worldwide, English is taught as a secondary language in schools across the globe. One reason for this is that English is the primary language of many of the planet’s most economically powerful countries (U.S.A., U.K., Canada, Australia, New Zealand).
“Well I can speak Pig-Latin.”
With so many people around the world learning English, it makes it relatively easy for Americans to find others to communicate with outside of their country. Although those who have grown up speaking English as a first language have the enormous advantage of strong fluency, more often than not, the popularity of English dissuades Americans from learning another language. The common attitude in America is that knowing a foreign language would be fun, but it’s not a necessary tool needed to get by in today’s world. This attitude puts our country at a huge disadvantage to the rapidly increasing bilingual populations of other counties.
“We aint got no education.”
The common norm in U.S. school systems is that a student can choose to take a foreign language (Most commonly Spanish or French) in high school as an elective. Sometimes this is available in middle school, and rarely in elementary. Very few public schools across the nation require that their students learn a foreign language. This policy dramatically contrasts that of many other countries’ school systems that require their students to begin learning a second language at early ages in primary school.
“Ok, Class. Settle down now, and turn your Klingon books to page 51.”
If I were Emperor of the United States I would require that schools begin teaching foreign languages in the first grade. At that young age, children are still developing their basic language skills. They are far more receptive to learning new words and phrases than their adolescent counterparts who’s raging hormones occupy all thinking with other things. I envision our country as a place inhabited by citizens that can freely talk in rapid indecipherable verses to each other whenever they want to say something bad about the person that’s standing next to them. I envision a day when the average American man has the tools necessary to suavely hit on non-English speaking foreign women with high rates of success. If our county’s school system doesn’t keep up with the ones overseas, we might one day wake up to find that our children can’t get as hot of women as some bilingual Frenchmen. That’s a world that I, for one, don’t want to live in.
When asked: “Who in history has made the most significant social changes to our world?” many people might first think of a religious figure, or a country’s leader. However, the most profound changes to our way of life have always been accomplished by inventors. Things like printing presses, light bulbs, computers, and toilet paper have shaped how we live our day to day lives. Inventions and innovations are the true driving force of our economy.
Personally, I’ve looked into patenting my invention ideas several times. I always come to the same road block: It costs too much, it takes too much time, and the whole process is confusing.
There are many companies out there that “help” inventors with the ordeal of running patent searches and filling out all the appropriate paper work. Their services can end up costing an inventor thousands upon thousands of dollars. If the prospective inventor finds out that someone else has already “beat them to the punch,” then they’re out of a lot of money all for nothing.
If I were the Emperor of the United States, I would set up a free program for private individuals seeking to get their ideas patented. Government patent assistants would be available to assist individuals in putting their ideas down on paper in coherent ways, running patent searches, and filling out all the appropriate paper work. Patent applications would be free. Even if there was a program that deferred the cost of these services until after a new invention began making money, it would still be better for our country than our current system. It would insight people to do something more with their ideas than leaving them locked up in their notebooks or brains. It would put power in the hands of the individual who is currently at a huge disadvantage to large corporations who can afford to get their inventions patented. It just might make the difference between whether or not our country has the leading edge on technology in the coming future.
With the presidential campaigns in full swing, everyone has their own particular deciding issues that help them to narrow down which potential candidates to vote for. (For me personally, a big one is the STEM CELL debate.) For many, it’s whether or not a candidate is for or against legalizing gay marriage.
I am a huge advocate for personal freedom. I feel that a person should be able to do whatever they choose as long as it isn’t directly affecting the liberties of another. I believe that it should be the government’s primary objective to protect and expand it‘s citizens’ freedoms. I also believe, however, that the government should stay out of it’s citizens’ personal lives as much as possible.
The main reason why the government is involved in marriage at all has to do with taxes. Often times, in our society, a husband will bring home a pay check, while a wife will stay at home in order to take care of the kids. In this arrangement, both the husband and wife are working to support a family with a single income. It makes sense that if two people have a shared income, then they should be taxed as a unit, and that their assets should be shared equally.
Now, let’s say a couple of buddies are living together. They share their household costs. Both have jobs that are seasonal, so sometimes one friend takes care of most of the bills, while at other times, the other friend carries the bulk of the load. These friends are not sleeping together romantically, but they are just as much in bed financially as the married couple. Yet, the government doesn’t recognize it that way.
Marriage is a cultural and religious institution. A good government should and must have a strong separation between church and state. It should make no difference to the government who is sleeping with or married to whom. If a man marries a man or has ten wives, what difference should it make to any outside parties? The government should be involved only in finding appropriate ways to tax people who are in bed financially with one another, and mediating disputes between those who have abandoned their financial arrangements.
If I where the Emperor of the United States I would eliminate the government’s legal acknowledgement of the institution of marriage. I would replace marriages with “domestic partnerships.” Domestic partnerships would be available for any people (whether romantically involved or not) that live together and share expenses. In order to be recognized as having a domestic partnership, the applicants would have only to show that they live together, and provide itemized lists of their current assets that they would like to maintain if or when they end their domestic partnerships.
What if I was to tell you that there is a secretive group of elite individuals that are responsible for choosing who becomes president of the United States, and that your vote really doesn’t count. This sounds like trailer of a Hollywood conspiracy movie, but it’s actually true. The elite group is THE ELECTORAL COLLAGE.
A little background:
>Way back when this country’s constitution was originally being drafted, America’s forefathers didn’t have a lot of faith in the average man’s ability to elect a decent leader. At the time, the country’s population consisted largely of farmers and frontiersmen who had little means to keep up with all the political issues. Many couldn’t even read or write. “What we need is some smart people to pick our leader,” thought the forefathers. So, with much deliberation and debate, the designers of our constitution came up with THE ELECTORAL COLLAGE.
Each state gets one electorate for every Congressman and Senator they have. These electorates collectively form the electoral collage, and they are the actual people who pick the president. (Not you! Sorry.) The way these electorates are chosen is up to each state. Nowadays, the electorates are pledged to vote for certain presidential candidates. When the average Joe is at the poles casting their vote, contrary to how the ballots appear, they AREN’T voting for the president. They’re voting for which electorates vote for president. It is important to know also that the electorates don’t have to vote for the candidates that they’ve been pledged to vote for. They can vote for whomever they choose. Just because one candidate is chosen in the popular vote, doesn’t mean that that candidate has to be chosen by the electoral college.
We don’t live in a democracy
In a true democracy, every citizen’s vote is equal. In America, we vote for mystery people (electorates) to vote for us. These people are supposed to be more educated on the issues and the candidates than what the average American is able to be. In this age of communication that we’re supposed to be living in; in this age of high speed Internet, that a person in Timbuktu can communicate with someone in Toronto about the speech that is going on in New York, I’d like to know where the electors get all their privileged information. The worst part is that most Americans don’t even know that the electoral college is composed of actual people. (Which is a strong argument as to why we still need them.)On top of that, very, very few people know who the electorates of their state are comprised of. Do you?
If I were the Emperor of the United States…
First of all, there wouldn’t be voting, because I would be all powerful, but I’d like to leave a fair system for after I’m gone. I would eliminate the electoral college system, and return the power to the people. Every vote would be equal. Period.
I often imagine what I would do if I were Superman. In my opinion, “the Man of Steel” would make a way better super hero if he gave up the whole Clark Kent thing and just appointed him self “The Emperor of America.” Although I’m usually opposed to totalitarian dictatorships, I think the threat of being zapped by laser vision from the sky might be an effective catalyst for positive social change.
From time to time, I get fed up with how things are ran in this country and go off on lengthy rants to whomever the unfortunate individual is next to me. I’m starting this blog not only to have an outlet for all my insanely genius ideas, but also to share those ideas with only those who actually want to be subjected to them.
My goal for this blog is to support my suggestions of social and political change in America with relevant factual evidence in an entertaining and coherent way.
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