Glass half full: suggestions to save America

Yes the glass is half full

Get.Some.Optimism

From Pajamas Media, Victor Davis Hansen has some ideas on how to save America:

1. A flat income tax would save trillions through simplification and greater compliance.
2. End academic tenure. It was designed to promote free speech, and ended up ensuring coerced uniformity of thought.
3. Raise the Social Security retirement age; if we live far longer and are healthier, why draw retirement at the same old age?
4. Start encouraging natural gas usage for transportation. It is a clean, abundant transportation fuel that would save us billions in decreased imported oil fees, and would increase jobs. We should build ten nuclear reactors a year, especially if we are to charge hybrid and electric cars.
5. Don’t cut defense. Eighteen-year olds come out four years later better educated and disciplined by the military than most on federal loans who stretch out the undergraduate years to their mid- or late-twenties. America has never regretted being overarmed; in 1860, 1917, 1939, 1950, and 1980, it regretted greatly vast cutbacks in military preparedness.
6. End affirmative action. Given intermarriage and the diversity of races and tribes, it is beginning to look like the racial codes of the Old South. Can someone tell me why the third-generation light skinned half-Mexican-American with a last name of Lopez qualifies and second-generation darker Tarsam Singh does not? An entire class of operators has mastered the system and created a level of cynicism that erodes public confidence.
7. Insist on a national exit test for BA degrees. A simple test of common knowledge would do. When Johnny does not know what the Parthenon is, but thinks Harriet Tubman, not Grant and Sherman, won the Civil war, we are in deep trouble.
8. Provide incentives for clean living. Those who are on federal assistance or Medicare, should receive bonuses for weight control, good blood pressure, and not smoking—either increased benefits or reduced copayments.
9. Build the fence, fine employers who hire illegal aliens, and beef up security. Without an influx of illegal aliens, the pool is static, and the formidable forces of assimilation begin to work while we fight over amnesty, guest workers, remittances, and anchor babies.
10. Freeze federal spending and insist on revenue neutral, pay as you go, new legislation.

The commentators have some good suggestions as well. From TLM:

1. Insist on exit tests for High School diplomas.
2. Close the Department of Education.
3. Repeal ObamaCare.
4. Print all government materials, ballots, driver’s ed tests etc in English only.
5. Repeal Title IX.
6. Rewrite all federal laws, statutes, and regulations. New rules must be specific not vague, must be 200 pages or less in length, and must be published online in proposed form 60 days prior to congressional vote.
7. Eliminate congressional option to abstain, vote present or skip voting on any and all proposed legislation.
8. Ban all congressmen/senators and department secretaries from lobbying the federal government for 5 years after leaving federal service.
9. Impose term limits.
10. Eliminate all federal, state, and local government employee unions.

Good stuff...