Issues and Ideas

 

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A New Tax Policy that Creates Jobs. For Everybody.

Income taxes were prohibited by the U.S. Constitution until 1913, when the Constitution was amended to allow them. Congress passed a law that same year which set the tax rate at 1 percent on income over $3,000 and 7 percent on income over $500,000.

Would anybody have voted for the income tax amendment if they had known what a monstrosity the tax code would become?

Susan Shelley supports a new constitutional amendment to repeal the entire U.S. income tax code and replace it with a five percent flat tax on income — personal income, corporate profits, capital gains, dividends, interest, income of any kind — above a level set by Congress.

The idea is to turn the United States into the greatest tax haven in the world, prompting businesses around the globe to locate within our borders and igniting rapid economic growth that will result in so much hiring so quickly that the United States experiences a labor shortage.

With a labor shortage, employers will have to offer higher wages and better benefits to attract and hold employees, and Americans of all ages and experience levels will be able to find jobs.

With more people working, the payroll taxes that fund Medicare and Social Security will bring in more revenue, making the programs gradually less insolvent without cutting benefits or raising tax rates.

With more take-home income, American consumers will spend more, stimulating the economy without burying everybody in debt.

Have you ever wanted to start a business? What would you do tomorrow if you knew you could keep 95 percent of the money you made doing it?

For just a moment, stop and think about what would happen if every individual and business in America knew for a fact that their tax rate was going to be five percent, a rate locked into the Constitution and safe from congressional tinkering.

Are you already thinking that higher wages might set off inflation, too much growth might be bad for the environment and our allies might be angry that we're stealing their companies away?

So you think it would work.

It isn't easy to pass a constitutional amendment, but the framers gave the American people a method of amending the Constitution that does not require the consent or participation of the U.S. Congress, just in case Congress turned out to be the cause of the problem that the American people wanted to address.

If two-thirds of the state legislatures request a constitutional convention for the purpose of proposing amendments, Congress must call one. If the convention adopts an amendment, it goes out to the states for debate and ratification. Once three-quarters of the state legislatures have approved the amendment, it becomes as much a part of the Constitution as if James Madison had written it personally.

Just the debate over the amendment might be enough to concentrate the minds of lawmakers in Washington, and we might see significant tax reform and real cuts in spending before the amendment is even drafted.

Susan Shelley goes into more detail about the five-percent flat tax proposal in her soon-to-be-published eBook, Uncle Sam's Nickel: The Five Percent Flat Tax That Will Restore Freedom and Prosperity, which will be available free in the Kindle Store at Amazon.com. (If you don't have a Kindle, you can download a free Kindle reading app for your PC, Mac, iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, or iPad.)

From AmericaWantsToKnow.com by Susan Shelley:

Restoring the Raise: How to Cause a Labor Shortage in America (September 12, 2010)

Tea Parties with Weapons (April 12, 2009)

 

 

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Medicare and Social Security

The answer to the insolvency of Social Security and Medicare is not benefit cuts or tax increases. It's more jobs at higher wages.

That's one more reason to support a constitutional amendment to repeal the entire U.S. income tax code and replace it with a five percent flat tax on income above a level set by Congress. A low flat tax will boost economic growth. As businesses expand and new businesses start up, joined by businesses that come to the United States from around the globe to get in on our low corporate tax rate, more and more jobs will be created. The revenues from the payroll taxes that support Social Security and Medicare will grow. The number of retirees will be the same. Gradually, the programs will become less insolvent.

Susan Shelley believes that means-testing Social Security and Medicare — cutting off benefits for seniors who are well off — is unfair to those who have paid into the system for their whole working lives and unfair to the workers who will continue to be forced to pay high payroll taxes even though the benefits are no longer guaranteed to them. Changing from universal eligibility to need-based eligibility risks undermining public support for the programs and could destroy them.

If the government believes it is necessary to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits, the very same piece of legislation should include a provision that reduces pension and health benefits for all current and retired U.S. Senators and Members of the House of Representatives. They got us into this mess, and they should not escape unscathed while blameless Americans are denied the benefits that were promised to them.

 

 

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Illegal Immigration

Even though most illegal immigrants are hard-working, decent people who are doing the best they can for their families under difficult circumstances, we just can't afford to subsidize the education, health care, housing, transportation and general living expenses of every impoverished person who comes to this country illegally.

We have to tighten security at our borders.

We can and should bill the federal government for the costs that the taxpayers of California are bearing for public services to illegal immigrants.

We can and should stop allowing illegal workers to receive checks from the IRS for refundable tax credits, a loophole that allowed 2.3 million illegal immigrant tax filers to receive $4.2 billion in tax "refunds" in 2010, according to the report of the Treasury Department's Inspector General for Tax Administration.

We don't have to deport families who have put down roots in our communities, but we certainly can and should deport criminal illegal aliens who are a threat to public safety.

Deportation is not a perfect tool to enforce our immigration laws. Our government's decades of failure to secure the border has created a difficult situation: illegal immigrants and American citizens in the same families. Perhaps we should consider a program to offer assistance to illegal immigrants who voluntarily agree to return home. We can't have a policy that everyone is welcome to stay in the United States if they can just manage to get here illegally, but that doesn't mean we have to be insensitive to the millions of decent people who have come here seeking a better life.

To make sure the federal government hears the concerns of Americans on this issue, a constitutional amendment that would give the states concurrent power to enforce immigration law should be proposed by the state legislatures if Congress and the president refuse to enforce the law.

From AmericaWantsToKnow.com by Susan Shelley:

Paying Illegal Immigrants to Live Here (September 3, 2011)

A Constitution Day Surprise (September 17, 2011)

L.A. Times Discovers Illegal Immigration (August 8, 2005)

 

 

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Iraq and Afghanistan

Not for the first time the United States is entangled in wars we refuse to win. We have no interest in achieving absolute military victory in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have no intention of forcibly installing a republican form of government that would protect individual rights. All we want to do is stop the tribal warfare and leave the countries in peace to govern themselves.

But our counter-insurgency strategy of promising protection to any faction that agrees to work with us means we can never leave, unless we are prepared to watch our allies massacred by their rivals.

The source of the problem in both countries is this: whichever group or sect or tribe controls the government controls all the wealth of the country. It's a formula for eternal violence.

If Afghanistan's government divided the country into private property and the country's laws protected property rights, private property owners would have a financial incentive to extract the mineral wealth that has been identified in that country. Afghanistan could have a thriving mining-based economy engaged in global trade instead of a shady opium-based economy engaged in warfare.

If Iraq's oil industry and other government-owned enterprises were privatized, individual Iraqis would have a path to economic security and would not have to show loyalty to a leader or a thug in order to keep from being frozen out of jobs and income. In Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the loyal members of his Baathist Party were the elite of the country.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney wrote in his memoir, In My Time, "We also thought that once we removed the top Baathists leaders from Saddam's government, we'd be able to get things up and running relatively quickly, but we discovered that many people were so accustomed to acting only on orders from the top that they were paralyzed without them."

Were the Iraqi people confused, or were they terrified? The U.S. toppled Saddam's regime but the Iraqi government still owned everything. Vicious fighting broke out between Sunni and Shiite sects for control of the government and all the wealth of the country. It wasn't bureaucratic inertia that had the Iraqis "paralyzed." Until they knew which group was going to control the government, they didn't know what to do to keep from being killed.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the members of a group that is out of power have nothing except a motive for murder.

You work with what you've got.

The only bloodless way out of these countries is for the U.S. to make our economic and military aid contingent on complete privatization of all government-owned property and enterprise. People who own property need and want a government that protects individual rights. People who must be loyal to tribal leaders because they control all the wealth are not really free. That's why our experiment in bringing freedom to Iraq and Afghanistan isn't working. What we've brought them isn't freedom but chaos.

"Warfare — permanent warfare — is the hallmark of tribal existence," said Ayn Rand in a 1977 lecture titled Global Balkanization. "The inculcation of hatred for other tribes is a necessary tool of tribal rulers, who need scapegoats to blame for the misery of their own subjects." Her solution was capitalism, "the antagonist that has demonstrated its power to relegate ethnicity to a peaceful dump."

"Capitalism," said the author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, "is the only system that banished ethnicity, and made it possible, in the United States, for men of various, formerly antagonistic nationalities to live together in peace."

That's not a view shared by the current administration in Washington. In a 2009 television appearance, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told interviewer Charlie Rose that in the future, he thinks "capitalism will be different."

There's no hope of promoting capitalism in Iraq and Afghanistan while we have an administration in Washington that doubts the future of capitalism here in the United States.

Change begins at home.

From AmericaWantsToKnow.com by Susan Shelley:

Why the Iraq Policy Isn't Working (November 30, 2005)

How to make the Iraq policy work (August 9, 2006)

From SusanShelley.com:

A Plan to Get Out of Iraq: Blackstone's Fundamental Rights and the Power of Property (May 22, 2004)

 

 

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Israel

Israel is a sovereign nation and entitled to defend itself against attack.

Susan Shelley opposes any effort by the United States to pressure Israel into entering "peace talks" with those who do not recognize Israel's right to exist.

What is there to talk about?

For years the United States has pushed Israel to hold back in its defensive military actions, to negotiate with those who have sworn the destruction of the one and only Jewish state, and to cede territory to groups that have used terror to advance their political objectives.

What has been gained by this policy? Nothing but more rocket attacks, more terror, and more demands for territory.

How long would the American people put up with it, if someone did that to us?

Every time the United States pressures Israel to risk its security by making concessions to rocket-firing terrorists, we promise Israel more military aid to help guarantee its security. Today we give Israel billions in military aid, but appeasing terrorists has not brought peace. It never will.

When terrorism is rewarded with the achievement of political objectives, there will never be an end to terrorism.

That doesn't make any of us safer.

It is disturbing that the Obama administration has ignored the agreement reached in April between the Palestinian Authority and the Hamas terror group for an interim unity government. On September 21, 2011, President Obama met in New York with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, giving the partner of terrorists equal standing with the elected prime minister of Israel, our longtime ally and partner in the fight against terrorism.

The United States has been fighting two wars for nearly ten years to prevent terrorists from controlling states, and President Obama is trying to give Hamas terrorists control of a state with part of Jerusalem as its capital.

The incumbent Democrats in the 30th District, regarded as strong supporters of Israel, are silent.

Perhaps they make their arguments in private, but the message goes out to the world that the United States thinks terrorism against Israeli civilians isn't really terrorism, it's just another form of political protest.

This is a double standard that is dangerous to U.S. national security. If the United States enables terrorism to achieve political goals in Israel, we are encouraging terrorists to keep up the fight forever in Iraq, Afghanistan, and perhaps New York City.

From AmericaWantsToKnow.com, by Susan Shelley:

Mahmoud Abbas and the real truth (November 1, 2011)

Ayn Rand's Advice and the Gaza Strip (August 17, 2005)

The Real Map of Israel (June 13, 2009)

Mr. Boehner's War Power (May 15, 2011)

Senator Joe Biden Erases Israel (August 23, 2007)

Rep. Brad Sherman braves town hall meeting (April 08, 2010)

 

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Limited Government

 

Freedom is a condition that exists under a government of limited power. If we want to preserve freedom in America, we have to stay awake and prevent the government from becoming more powerful than the Constitution permits.

This is a bipartisan problem.

From AmericaWantsToKnow.com by Susan Shelley:

The Impulse to Censor (October 18, 2009)

Dick Cheney's Impeachable Offense (July 18, 2007)

Henry Waxman's Optional Constitution (August 19, 2009)

Senate Republicans Fire the Big Gun (October 29, 2005)

Obama Admits It (September 10, 2009)

Wiretapping for Freedom: The President's Secrets Revealed (December 17, 2005)

 

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Capitalism

Capitalism is the economic system of a free country.

From AmericaWantsToKnow.com by Susan Shelley:

Barack Obama Explains Socialism (November 3, 2007)

Jamie Dimon, Superhero (April 19, 2009)

Jeff Immelt, Villain (April 23, 2009)

The Price of a Little Socialism (February 26, 2009)

From SusanShelley.com:

Defending Capitalism (June 28, 2008)

 

 

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Estate and Inheritance Taxes

Susan Shelley opposes estate and inheritance taxes of any kind on estates of any size. Death taxes fall hardest on family-owned small businesses, farms and ranches, while sophisticated tax planning helps larger estates avoid the grim reaper's grasp. Even worse than the unfairness of the death tax is the wrong-headed idea that there is a point at which your money becomes public property. Not in a free country, it doesn't.

 

From AmericaWantsToKnow.com by Susan Shelley:

Warren Buffett's Big Con (November 14, 2007)

 

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Health Care Reform

The Obama health care reform law should be fully repealed.

Government mandates for more and better coverage just drive up the cost of health insurance and ultimately leave more people in trouble. What if you want to buy a policy that doesn't include "wellness" visits and does have lifetime dollar limits on benefits to keep the price down? Too bad, the federal government won't let you buy it and it won't let any company sell it to you.

The individual mandate to buy insurance, combined with the all-or-nothing policies mandated by the government, is terribly unfair to younger people. They are required to buy expensive policies precisely because the government believes they will not use them. Their premium dollars are needed to pay for the very expensive health care of other people, including people with pre-existing conditions who will pay the same rate charged to the healthy people who are unlikely to file any claims.

Of course, it won't take long for everyone to figure out that they can come out ahead by paying the fine for failing to buy insurance. The law allows people to buy policies on their cell phone in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, so there's no reason to stay continuously insured, as millions of Americans struggle to do right now.

This is one reason the Obama health care reform law can't possibly work. It's equal parts wishful thinking and fantasy math. In real life, there's no way to give everybody everything they want at everybody else's expense.

Susan Shelley favors a more incremental approach to health care reform that would be mindful of the unintended consequences of careless government mandates.

 

From AmericaWantsToKnow.com by Susan Shelley:

Why Health Care Reform Will Fail (October 13, 2009)

The Letters, the Roar, the End (October 29, 2010)

Bad at Math (July 26, 2009)

 

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The War on Drugs

The right of the states to legalize drugs, if the people of each state desire to do so, is protected by the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

From www.SusanShelley.com:

Marijuana, Prohibition and the Tenth Amendment (February 2, 2003)

From AmericaWantsToKnow.com by Susan Shelley:

Why Marijuana Should be Legalized (October 19, 2010)

 

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Second Amendment Rights

Susan Shelley supports Second Amendment rights.

The U.S. Supreme Court has said the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to keep and bear arms, separate from any service in a militia. The Court ruled in another case that the Second Amendment is incorporated into the Fourteenth Amendment and therefore applies to the states as well as the federal government.

It's a good thing the justices did that, or we'd have to amend the Constitution to read, "The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed, and we really mean it."

Federal judges will play a significant role in shaping gun laws in the future, because under the Supreme Court's theory of the incorporation of the Bill of Rights into the Fourteenth Amendment, a state law infringing gun owners' fundamental rights could be upheld in the federal courts. The test is whether the state has a compelling reason for the law, and whether the law is both necessary and narrowly tailored to achieve a permissible purpose.

It can be quite subjective.

If the president appoints judges who are not sympathetic to Second Amendment rights, and if the voters elect U.S. Senators who share that view, state and local laws restricting the right to own a gun could be upheld by the Supreme Court. This fight isn't over.

Susan Shelley is the author of How the First Amendment Came to Protect Topless Dancing: A Citizen's Guide to the Incorporation Doctrine.

 

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Growing Green

Environmental protection is vitally important, but in some cases it has to co-exist with economic growth and jobs.

Environmental regulations are not created equal. Safety concerns are paramount. We all benefit when beautiful vistas are protected from civilization's encroachment. Preservation for its own sake may sometimes have to be balanced against the economic development that human beings need to survive.

We're a species, too.

Old ideas about the environment should be reviewed to see if they're still good ideas. Carpool lanes? Curbside recycling? Mercury-filled fluorescent lightbulbs? Federal mileage standards for automobiles? Can we talk?

 

 

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Global Warming

Even if global warming is genuine, and not the result of manipulated science, and even if global warming is worsened by human activity, instead of being a solar phenomenon beyond human control, there's no evidence that the policies proposed to limit greenhouse gas emissions in the United States would make enough of a difference in the earth's temperature to justify the enormous expense and economic dislocation they would cause.

We should focus our efforts on adapting to climate change, if in fact it is happening, and not bankrupt ourselves in a futile attempt to cool the earth.

 

From AmericaWantsToKnow.com by Susan Shelley:

The Almost Pointless Fear of Global Warming (December 10, 2006)

The Awkward Truth About Global Warming (January 6, 2006)

 

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Energy

Americans need affordable energy. We should get rid of policies that deliberately make energy more expensive in order to pressure Americans to conserve. There's too much financial pressure on Americans already.

Let's balance the importance of environmental protection with the need for affordable, plentiful, secure energy supplies. Domestic exploration and development of energy resources should be encouraged, not banned or criminalized.

 

 

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Privacy

Making abortion a crime will not stop it from happening. It will just drive it underground and put women's lives at risk from unsafe and unqualified medical practitioners.

Susan Shelley supports the right of privacy and believes the Supreme Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision should be mirrored with a constitutional amendment so that a woman's right to privacy is not at risk with every vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court.

From www.SusanShelley.com:

Why There is No Constitutional Right to Privacy, and How to Get One.

 

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Marriage

Susan Shelley has no objection to same-sex marriage and believes that everyone has the right to be happy. She believes that wide social acceptance will be achieved faster if the change in the marriage laws occurs through the legislative process and not through the courts.

 

 

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Education

No Child Left Behind should be repealed. Education is a state responsibility and should be controlled at the local level, not by bureaucrats in Washington with nothing to do except bother people who are busy teaching.

Teachers are the good guys. We don't need the federal government hounding them from a distance. We don't need federal regulations that force teachers to spend less time teaching and more time juggling forms and reports.

The Constitution gives the federal government no power over education, so Washington controls education by threatening states with the loss of federal funds. It's another example of how the federal government has usurped power by over-taxing the American people and then allowing the money to come back with strings attached. We would all be better off if the federal government taxed us less, controlled us less and threatened us less.

 

 

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