If you were running for president...

If you were to run for president, what would your campaign be? Please - serious thoughts only.

I'll start it off:

Welfare Reform: Yes, yes, I know. There are a few million of you out there right now thinking this is turning into a race related issue. It is not. There are millions of African Americans, Caucasians, Latino’s, and Asians (just to name a few) in this country who use some portion of the welfare system. So pulling the race card on this issue again, is just not going to work. We must rid ourselves of the fears of being labeled racist, when the people whom are doing the labeling are indeed racists themselves. To be labeled a racist, by a racist, should be as unimportant to all of us as being labeled infidels by those whom seek to destroy us from far far away. But back to my point: What is welfare?
The U.S. Social Security Administration defines social welfare expenditures as the cost of "cash benefits, services, and the administration of public programs that directly benefit individuals and families." This broad definition includes expenditures for social security (Old-Age, Survivor's, Disability, and Health Insurance, or OASDHI), health and medical programs, education, housing, veterans' programs, and public aid programs.
There are many estimates out there as to how much our governments, both local and federal, spend every where on these welfare programs. Most credible estimates put the figures in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Hundreds of billions of dollars, and for what? So that families can grow more dependant on it. So that they work less, procreate more, and do nothing for the American way of life. Since when did the American way of life become getting something for nothing? The America I grew up in was the Best person for the job.
Now – instead of striving to get ahead in the work place – more and more lower-middle class families are aiming to do less and rely on the hard work of others. This is not to say, however; that there are not people who depend on these services, but that, we will get to in a moment. If you are one of the millions of hard working-class Americans reading this, then you understand what I’m saying. You work hard so that others do not have to. There is no denying it, that there are a very large percentage of the welfare receiptients that do not deserve the assistance they are receiving. They are receiving assistance because they are lazy, not because they are ill. They are able to fake an injury at a doctor’s office and be labeled disabled, but peddle a few pounds of dope on the side.
They are able to claim disability but continue to farm. They are able to procreate 9 kids, collect their checks, drive 50 dollar cars with 10,000 dollar rims, meanwhile their children live in squallor and grow up to mimic their surroundings.

But, yes, there are those who require the welfare that they currently receive. Without their montly checks, life simply would not be possible with the rising costs of food and energy. This is the reason why I purpose a welfare reform, not abolishment.
There are simply too many ways in which one can defraud the welfare system and collect a free paycheck for doing nothing.

There are loopholes inside of the loopholes, and of course, wherever there are some loopholes, there will always be someone who wants to jump through them. I propse we close off these loopholes by changing the ways we go about accepting or denying someone their privilage of welfare. Take a more common sense approach. We have parole officers who keep an eye on our criminals and make sure they are staying in line. Therefore, why can we not have government officials who do the same for our welfare receipients? If John Doe walks into his local welfare office wearing an expensive clothing line, is 29 years old, and drives a car with rims that cost more than most of our own vehicles, and he is merited welfare based solely on the color of his skin, then we are defeating the original intent of the welfare program. If a common sense approach puts power in the hands of our trusted government workers who are in charge of denying or accepting applicants of welfare, in order to make just and on the spot decisions without fear of retaliation from the politically correct crowd. As a country with a stained background of racial injustice from the American Indians, to the Slave Trade, we have tried to better ourselves in modern times by creating opportunities for those whom otherwise had none – but in doing so – we have changed for the worse in an opposite direction. What I mean by this is that we still remain fixated on the color of a persons skin. Now its okay to give a black man free money because his ancestors may or may not have been slaves, but its not okay to give a white woman the very same amount of money simply because she is white. The reason this happens is because there is a person who’s job it is to award money based on what he or she see’s on a piece of paper. They are not the same people conducting the interviews who get to see the preson for what they truly are. These people do not get to use their God-given instincts to judge rather or not a person is being fully forthcoming on their finciancial position. Instead they see which Ethnic box got checked and simply go from there.
I have a sister-in-law who came upon rough times because her boyfriend left her soon after the birth of their daughter. She had nothing and had no-one, and had never had to make decisions of her own, so is now in an entirely new world all on her own. My wife and I continue to help her out to this day in any way that we can that is within reason. In the beginning, I helped her go through all the paperwork and interview processes for applying for food stamps and financial assitance. When we were setting in her case workers office, we were literally told that the color of her daughters skin would have granted her more money on the LINK card program (food stamps) if her daughter were black. This came from a black case worker at the local officer near our place of residence. What sort of racial injustice is that? Instead of fixing the problem – we have created a new one to try and correct mistakes from hundreds of years ago. My grandmother always told me “two wrongs don’t make a right” and my grandmother is a very smart woman. Two wrongs don’t make a right. You only perpetuate the problem going about it in this manner.

You create no harmony by giving one man money and denying another, simply because one mans ancestors used to do it to the others based on skin color. Nobody alive today has ever owned a slave. Nobody alive today has ever been a slave. To use the slavery was bad stand point to merit a welfare check to an african american is simply ludicrous. To use the slavery isnt my fault to abolish the welfare system is equally as ludicrous. As the human race, we cannot forget about slavery. Slavery was a horrible thing that should never have happened. But it did happen. We should not forget it so that we may learn from it. We should use what we learn to grow closer with one another, instead of being more racially divided than ever. If you make the welfare system equal to all, then you eliminate one more obstacle that we as a people must overcome in order to eliminate racial inequality and hypocrisy.
Martin Luther King Jr. was not talking about his “dream” as being a day when black people had it better than whites, he was talking about a day when black people had it the same as whites.
Reforming welfare so that we can be sure that the people who need it, get it, and the people whom don’t, won’t will save our country billions of dollars that can be more productively used in other areas. Not only does it benfeit our nation fincinally, but it also benefits our humanity. It qualms the tired worker, and forces the lazy to work. Eventually – the amount of people who depend on welfare will become fewer and fewer because it would be easier to get a job than it would be to get free money. A lot of people who currently depend on welfare today, only depend on it because it was an easier option early on. They have grown so accustomed to the free money every month that they have used it as a platform to build their lives on, and if you were to remove that platform, you would surely crumple their lives.
When we are able to live in a country where the able bodied people do what they can, and the disabled body people still get the assitance they require, then we can truly say we live in a wonderful world. Until then – Please do not back down and take the easy road out in anything that you do. It only makes it worse for future generations. We do not want to be in the history books as the generation who could not figure it out. I leave you with these words to ponder.

An interesting post.
I think it actually provides somethign these political boards need right now.

No matter who you support - what would YOU do if YOU were president? Realistically speaking of course.

Its always interesting to read someones opinion on a decision someone else made, especially when that person has no opinion of resolution theirself.

Anyone have anything to contribute?
Personally - i kind of agree on the welfare issue myself.
I think welfare is out of control, and if anyone except the disabled or elderly is on welfare, then its being mis-used. So complete welfare reform would my first issue.

Then i'd tackle enforcement of the slander/lible laws. I think this decision of Larry Flint oh so many years ago has been stretched past its breaking point, and needs to be re-evaluated for modern times and modern circumstances.
Censorship is hardly ever the answer. But it some cases it truely is.

The war in Iraq? Gone. We're headed back to Afghanistan to finish the job we should have been done with by now.

I'd do everything in my power to find Osama. If nothing else, for moral victory. It doesnt matter fi you believe he was behind 9/11 or not. The fact is that the public at large does, and capturing a known and convicted terrorist would serve as a huge victory. The current administration isnt doing enough. If they were, we'd have him by now.
If we can capture Sadamn Hussein, who we werent even after in the first place, and has limitless power/resources/money/hiding places

why the hell can't we capture a grotesquely tall arabian man on a dialisis (sp?) machine?


I'd push for new laws that say all motorized vehicles of any kind that use the public roads in any manner, have to be licensed. This includes farm vehicles.

I'd push for a form of UHC, and i'd push for laws that limit what a hospital can charge for vital operations.

I'd let the economy fix its self. its a well oiled machine, that left unmessed around with, will fix its self.

If you're a homeowner and you defautl on your house - im sorry, its really nothing personal - but im not going to bail you out

if you're a bank who lent money to people that couldnt pay for it - im not going to bail you out. Ill set back and watch yoru competition buy out your bankrupt business and make it better.