Thag's Incoherent Political Wish List

No gun control. Make ATF the tax collectors they are supposed to be. Building an illegal machinegun should be tax evasion not possession of a forbidden device. Letting the tinkering types tinker on the problem with machineguns gave us Browning (pbuh), Gatling, Lewis and Maxim. Since trying out an idea is so tightly regulated, you have to get a prohibitively expensive license before you can even begin to see if your idea works, that many otherwise talented gun designers have focused their energy elsewhere. Our three main machineguns we issue to the troops are the M2HB, M240 and M249. One is over 60 years old, the other two are from Belgium.

End victim classes. Are you people or not? Are you my equal or not? No more affirmative action. No more "hostile work places". You demanded entry into this world, play as an equal or admit you can't compete and go home. If I am expected to have only my merits to work with, so shall you. Give as good as you get. And making the prior victims equal does not mean punitive awards against the former oppressors. Especially since many of us in the "oppressor class" didn't do it. Lots of us came to America after slavery ended. Lots of us do not think of women as objects or baby factories. Reversing the roles is not going to do what you think it will. Run the reversal long enough and we now have a victim claim against you. And if we never can claim it, then you aren't talking about justice at all. Vengeance is not justice.

Once there are no victim classes, there's no more hate crime. And let's face it, someone getting beat up because they are gay is not being beaten by someone who like them. Assault is a hate crime regardless of the identity of the victim. This would not even be on the list except a group of black people can murder a white guy and get manslaughter. A group of white guys beat the stuffing out of a black guy, who makes a full recovery, gets many, many years in jail. The laws must be equal. All people must be treated the same or it's not equal.

I can't ban your church if your religion offends me. You don't get to use your church to ban the things that offend you if you can merely stay home and never see the offensive material. This means places like adult bookstores and titty bars. This means TV shows. If you don't wanna see nekkid people, don't go into the store. If you don't like the show on TV, change the channel! If I hire porn actors to fuck on your alter, you have a case. To get freedom, you must grant freedom.

The market is better at deciding what something should cost than the government; get them out of the economy as much as possible. The recent example of people whose income was smaller than their mortgage payment receiving loans because the were in a victim class illustrates what is wrong with government interfering with business and having victim classes.

Free trade, to a point. Comparative advantage is real, but we do have to think about home. Recall, I said get the government out of the economy as much as possible. There are some legitimate economic functions for the government in the economy. Think along the lines of "governs least, governs best".

Deunionization. Quick news flash about unions, when the company you are striking against can find enough non-union labor to fill all the jobs, you've lost your bargaining position. All of the unions started out from skilled trades, people of extra-ordinary training or skill. People who could not be replaced by just anyone walking in off the street. To put it another way; when the janitor makes $27 an hour the manufacturer deserves to fail.

Excessive executive compensation. Not strictly a political item, but if a CEO screws the pooch, he should not have a reward coming. It's like putting an ejection seat in a 747, "No matter how bad this gets, I'm safe!" I want the pilot to share my fate if he's going to make a lawn dart.

Energy. Since the last 1% of any tech development costs 90% of total development, we should really start thinking about stopping at 99%. The main problem in energy now is we're at 99% on not making pollution. 100% perfect combustion is CO2 and water. If you ban making CO2, you are banning burning.

Military. We need one and it needs to be strong enough to defend our interests where ever they happen to be. That does cost money, but we are spending too much because there's a distinct lack of competition in the defense industry. There were once thirty companies making military aircraft, there are now three (2.5 really). A 90% reduction in competition that came about from the government interfering with the economy. We don't design our own guns because of interference with designers. We're having trouble making enough ships for our Navy because we have killed our shipyards with environmental laws that don't do anything but kill off industry. We are killing our aviation industry because we let Congress Critters leave Congress and begin lobbying for the defense contractors.