Vacation break

I am on vacation for a few days, so this blog will be a couple of days behind. In the interim, some thoughts have come up.

• In a broadcast from NPR, a university professor made the statement "Poverty cannot be cured by the current method (motivate lazy people) nor can it be cured by throwing money at the problem (the old welfare system). To eliminate poverty one must eliminate the causes, which means not providing opportunities alone but providing the opportunity to seize those opportunities. In other words, poverty begets more poverty, and the best way to eliminate it (or at least reduce it) is to provide programs such that people do not have to worry where their next meal is coming from or if they have a roof over their heads. In the prior post I talked about Maslow's needs; in a subsequent post I'll list them and discuss how the government can help.
• On another NPR program, a question was raised as to what the new president will do about President Bush's (and de facto president Cheney's) grab for executive power. A former Reagan aide says not only does the next President have to promise not to abuse the power, he has to repudiate the current administration's attempts as unconstitutional, in fact illegal. I'm all for that, and I'll explain in another post.
• Last but not least, there are a couple of things I've learned in the last day about taxes and the US budget, again on NPR. I will discuss them and make some changes to my "! TAXES !" post.

Stay tuned!

If I were President: ! TAXES !

Every time I think about taxes, taxation, and the IRS I think of something new. In some ways I think a flat tax would be a lot cheaper to manage, but if a flat tax is installed one would have to count all income. The example I used was Lee Iacocca in the 1970s with Chrysler. Mr. Iacocca took a salary of $1 for the first years of his contract. Under a flat tax on income, should Mr. Iacocca have gotten the same servies as others in his neighborhood who make $20,000? $40,000?

All wage statistics are taken from the US Department of Labor.

Interesting poverty statistic: 25% of African-Americans and 20% of Hispanics are living in poverty. The overall rate is 12.5%. I do not believe this means whites are better workers or that non-whites are lazy. I do believe this is a subtle form of racism (more on the negative affects of this in my next post).

Suppose I install a flat tax of, say, 15% on all income. To be fair (see the Iacocca question), all income must be taxed, including dividends and capital gains. Welfare and unemployment insurance is not income, nor is Social Security above a certain minimum (more on that in a bit). Currently capital gains are taxed at 15%, so its inclusion as income would have no effect on investments.

Interesting poverty statistics: for one person, the US defines the poverty level as roughly $10,500 per year. For a married couple with no kids, the level is $13,500, which isn't much of a gap. For a married couple with two kids (my situation), the poverty level is about $20,500. Now, for a rent of $900 a month (a typical two-bedroom apartment in a suburb), that means roughly one-half of the family's income is spent on shelter. This to me seems unreasonable; it certainly puts home ownership beyond the means of most people.

Some people say taxing dividends as income amounts to double taxation. They're right; a company pays dividends out of its profits. Profits are taxed, and then the dividends are taxed again as income when a person declares them on their income tax. I can say three things in response to that. One, that is the current situation; making dividends subject to a flat tax doesn't change the current tax structure. Second, companies routinely make more money than their profit margins appear to be, as they get tax breaks we individuals do not get. I am not personally against these tax breaks; their purpose is to encourage businesses to keep doing business where they are rather than move to a cheaper location. However, it does weaken the argument over double taxation because not all company income is taxed. And finally, it is reasonable to ask companies employing thousands of people and making millions of dollars (sometimes billions!) to pay more taxes than does a single, four-person family. This is one of the reasons I sometimes lean toward a flat tax on everything.

Interesting poverty statistics: a minimum-wage job at the current US minimum wage is $6.55 (it is different in different states, so I'll use the overall average), which amounts to a salary of $13,600 per year. This is not substantially above the poverty level; an extra $3,000 a year is only $58 per week. You can barely buy a decent pair of sneakers for that. If a family has children and they both work, where can they find daycare for $115 a week? If they alternate shifts, one parent will not see the other except on weekends. That's almost like having a divorce. They might be able to save a few bucks on daycare, but then they need insurance... and what if they do not work for a company providing insurance?

One last flat tax comment. This is how it would work. I have not checked these calculations with an economist, so I have no idea if it would work; this is just a "fer instance" exercise. My "flat tax" would have the following attributes.

• 15% tax on all income (dividends, capital gains, salary, commissions, everything).
• Below two and one-half times the poverty line (based on filing status and indexed to inflation) the individual will pay no taxes at all.
• Social security income over five times the poverty line (again based on filing status and indexed to inflation) would be taxed at normal income rates.
• Personal deductions will remain for one home, one home equity loan, local and state tax payments, day care expenses (say, $7,000 per year per child under 15, indexed to inflation, limited to $28,000 per year), student loan interest, and certain savings programs (with an upper limit on income to be eligible) such as 529 plans.
• Paycheck deductions for 401-K, 403-B, and other retirement and IRA will remain as well.
• Tax credits I have yet to work out, but at least one would be for teachers spending their own money for school books etc.
• Company profits will be taxed at the same 15% rate, with certain (to be worked out) deductions for R&D. Further, money paid out as dividends will not be taxed.

There are some incentives to work out. I would like to see people work for a living and not be on welfare. I think I stated (in an earlier post) I would create a federal jobs program. I would like to see everyone be able to afford housing, food, clothes, and companionship (essentially Maslow's basic needs). I would like to cut down on corporate welfare; they don't really need it. It does not seem fair for the US government to limit profits or prices; however, it is perfectly fair (and expected!) to collect a fair and reasonable share of the companies within its borders. Governments exist for the good of all, not just the good of corporations.

Interesting poverty statistics: a person in the US cannot get insurance unless that person is rich or working. This means a large number of people in the United States cannot get health care of any kind. To me this is backwards; the people most in need of preventive care are the poor. Health insurance should be a basic right, not based on your job.

It's probably hit you already: I said I was going to tax Social Security income. To clarify, I am going to tax some Social Security income. This is to prevent people who earn a lot of money and collect Social Security from gaming the system. In addition to the above taxation, people earning Social Security with additional income greater than five times the poverty level would have their Social Security checks reduced by 5% for each multiplier they are above the poverty line. For example, today five times the poverty line is $67,500. If a person was receiving non-Social Security payments totaling, say, $95,000, they would receive 85% of their expected social security check each month (five percent times three). Naturally all of this would be indexed to inflation.

If a flat tax can't fly, then we need to revamp the current system. Did you know the IRS rules now run to over 1,500 pages? Are we kidding? Many of those pages are tax loopholes or outright breaks for corporations, or limits on income so individuals cannot get tax breaks they may need. I'd certainly roll back some of the Bush tax cuts; re-evaluate the business tax situation; install a higher Federal minimum wage (starting at, say, $10 an hour) and index it to inflation; and look to overhaul the government's budget through GAP (general accounting practice) and the GAO (government accountability office).

One last comment on taxes. These sound like either really good, or really bad, ideas. The big problem I see is politicians are now so concerned with getting re-elected they will never vote to raise any taxes, or even talk about it. As I said in my first post, when I pick my cabinet members I will make sure to immediately start a knowledgeable task force to study our current tax and budget situation to improve all of our standings relative to the companies and their CEOs making astonishing amounts of money most of us can only dream of.

If I were President 4: some social programs

In earlier posts I said I would stop the War on Drugs. I would do so because it hasn't worked. We've spent a great deal of money on the "war," and yet drug use is higher than before the War on Drugs was declared. If I remember correctly, in Economics 101 we are taught "the quantity supplied is related to the quantity demanded" such that price will act to equalize the quantity demanded and the quantity supplied, also called an economic equilibrium. If we want to reduce the usage of drugs in the US, there are two ways to do it: limit the quantity supplied or reduce the quantity demanded. The War on Drugs failed to do the first, and the jailing of people for minor drug offenses did not reduce demand, so where does that leave us?

It turns out there have been pilot programs which reduce the likelihood of teens and young adults getting involved with drugs. These programs cost a fraction of police enforcement of drug laws. Further, if the number of drug offenses is reduced, prison overcrowding would be reduced. According to the Bureau of Justice, 21% of state prisoners and 55% of federal prisoners are in for drug offenses. In numbers, this is half a million people... and most of those are either users or low-level dealers, and a large majority are minorities. The US has the largest per capita incarceration rate... even higher than China's, odd considering that country's regular jailing of dissidents.

One other contribution to the high rate of incarceration is minimum required sentences and the so-called "three strikes" laws. If judges had more leeway in sentencing there would be fewer people in jail, even if they sentence the same number of people they did before, just because of the shorter terms many of these prisoners would get.

So far this has been a lot of talk. What I would propose in a budget is a reduction in the drug enforcement agency and a commensurate increase in the number of prevention and treatment programs. In addition, I plan a number of reforms to improve the overall standard of living, which will also act to reduce the number of drug users. Such reforms include government works projects, particularly for infrastructure improvements (modeled after FDR's WPA projects); an increase in the minimum wage to place incomes of those workers above the poverty level; a more equitable tax structure (which I will discuss in the next post); and other improvements I have not fully thought out yet.

Next are two social programs I'll touch on: Social Security and Medicare. Please read this post. In that post I wrote:

... the real fix to Social Security is to eliminate the cap on taxable income for Social Security taxes, or at least make it a reasonable number (say, $1,000,000) and then index it for inflation....

Finally, the real social program in trouble is not Social Security but Medicare. To fix both problems, the Social Security tax should be lowered to 4%, the Medicare tax raised from 1.7% to 4%, and have no caps on income subject to these taxes. Today the combined weight of these two taxes is 7.8 percent, so the change I suggest would retain about the same weight (it's actually a 0.2% tax increase, which is very slight) but resolve both problems for the foreseeable future.

As a final comment in this post, I draw your attention to evidence-based social programs that work. Please give that website a read.

Next post: taxes.

Interim thoughts: Bush and the Russians on Georgia.

Hello, please accept my apologies for being a week behind in this blog. Obviously it isn't offending anyone as there are no comments. I have been really busy with work around the house and haven't had the time to add more posts. Therefore, for this post I'll place a short rant, and then restart the presidential blogs Monday.

I see in the news President Bush is complaining about Russia's "invasion" of Georgia. President Bush is right. Unfortunately, we've lost all credibility with the rest of the world to be indignant when Russia treats Georgia as we have treated Iraq. The interesting thing is, Georgia used to be part of the Soviet Union; Iraq has never been part of the US.

The rest of the world must be snickering behind their hands at Bush as he hypocritically chides the Russians for doing something we've been doing for the last 7 years: invading a soverign nation without cause. How ironic.

If I were President 3

Yesterday I talked about democracy as an open form of government. I said I would be far more open with the press, no more lies. I also said I'd re-declassify previously non-classified documents, and open up some investigations into some of the policies of the Bush Administration. One of the worst is the enemy combatants issue and the people we are keeping in Guantanamo Bay (and elsewhere) indefinitely.

Even a conservative court, with many of them siding with the ideology of George Bush, said the keeping of criminals without trial, without access to council, or even knowing what they did wrong is unconstitutional. The Bush administration said, "Fine, good idea" and kept right on ignoring the law of the land, the law of the world (as delineated in the Geneva Convention) and the Constitutionally-granted rights to a speedy trial, the right to council, and the right to confront their accusers. What kind of justice is that? No wonder nearly the entire free world thinks we're hypocritical and is afraid of us.

As Commander in Chief, I would first take us off a war footing with these nations and eliminate the "enemy combatant" label. I would then have the case of each person in Guantanamo, and those rendered to other countries, examined as any criminal case. I would ask the military if each may still have useful information, find out who is actually innocent of the "charges", and immediately release those who were either innocent or those for whom their "crime" would have been paid for by the length of their incarceration (i.e. "time served"). Of course, repatriation may be a problem. This is a problem I have not given full thought to. Perhaps some of them have family to return to. Perhaps some would like to become US citizens (although I doubt that; we've abused them so much I consider the possibility unlikely). I'm not sure what other answers to give until I knew more about the problem, and it would be different for each person.

Once Guantanamo has been emptied, I would return it to the Cubans. It is, after all, their land.

During this process I would have the military, CIA, and FBI re-evaluate their interrogation techniques versus standard practice in the free world, the Geneva Convention, and a general concern for human rights. As I said in an earlier post, terrorists need to be dealt with on a criminal basis, not a war footing. This means going back to the UN and work with the major powers to begin the long, slow process of regaining our status in the world regarding basic human rights.

Of course, human rights within the US are of great concern to me as well. We have some housecleaning to do, such as eliminating the warrant-less wiretapping and other spying on people of the US. The FISA provisions work well for those cases where there is an imminent threat. We don't need the government to be Big Brother; that's so 1984. Orwell would be "proud" of the Bush administration.

Speaking of human rights, I consider the right to health as a basic right. While there is nothing specific in the Constitution about medical care, there wouldn't be anyway; medical care in the late 18th century was just about non-existent. The Founders did not write about it because it simply didn't occur to them. As I've stated before, I am not a strict constructionist; that is a foolish position, in my mind. There are so many new concepts and technologies developed over the last 230+ years which the Founders could not have known about, and to assume because they didn't write about something it can be ignored. That's not logical.

Because I've written a bit about this before (see my post Single Payer Healthcare) I won't go into much more detail here. I will just remind people the three countries with the best health care are France (the best in the world), Taiwan (modeled after our own Medicare system), and Canada... and all three have national health care. Are these systems perfect? No, nor do I expect any healthcare system designed by the US to be perfect either. The big difference between those countries with a national health plan and the United States is the fact we require people to have jobs before they get insurance, while the other countries set out to insure everyone at a basic level and allow those with jobs to purchase better coverage. We have to learn the way to better care is not to line the pockets of corporations but to care about the individual. This is a major paradigm shift, but will have to be made not only for healthcare but our energy policy, safety, climate change, and so on. The big mistake was considering a corporation to be the same as a single person in regards to who can petition the US government to do what they want. There is no possible way one person, or even a million single individuals, can compete against a powerful lobby backed by deep corporate pockets. This practice must end.

Well, that was quite a soap box speech. My next post may be just as interesting: social programs other than national health care. See you then!

What I would do if I were President of the US 2

Once my cabinet positions are full, I can get down to the real work of governing. A democracy requires an fully-informed public, and a government of consensus not fear. The current administration condones neither; they seem quite content to rule by fear ("Elect Obama and the terrorists win!") and want to hide everything done governing the United States such as secret courts, deliberations (the Cheney task force on energy policy), and re-classifying papers which were not classified in 2000. As President, I need to get back to the basics.

[There are people who believe the Guantanamo problem (holding enemy combatants) is the most critical human rights problem we face, and they could be right. I have placed the Guantanamo problem after the "open democracy" program for the simple reason that is a relatively easy problem to fix, while opening the democracy will take longer and is more complicated. Thus I want to start it so it can continue in the background while I handle Guantanamo.]

When I say "Get back to the basics" I am using a methodology conservatives should love. I want to look at the Constitution and try to resolve our current issues within its framework using solutions which have worked in the past. That is, after all, what a good conservative is supposed to do. I believe the problem modern conservatives have with this methodology is, as I've written before, the Constitution is in general a liberal document. It was way ahead of its time; most of the countries during the late 18th century were monarchies of various sorts, dictatorships, and similar methods of restricting the rights of the people. Jefferson, Adams, Franklin, Madison et al. wanted, as Lincoln said, "a government of the people, by the people, for the people." There is nothing in the Constitution or its amendments regarding supreme executive power, as the current administration asserts. I intend to return the power to the people.

Step one is to either fix an existing or create a new Web site, including a personal blog, to pass information along to the American public (at least, those with Internet capability). Step two would be to examine all classified papers and determine which should be declassified. Automatically on that list are the documents which were re-classified by the current administration. Also automatically on the list are certain committee meeting minutes and information, such as the Cheney energy policy meetings, which do not compromise the security of the US. Other papers would have to pass muster for classification as state secrets, battle plans, and so on. I believe in an open government, but not so open we become vulnerable.

I would then appoint a blue-ribbon panel of educators to look at the No Child Left Behind act. That act was a good idea whose implementation went horribly wrong. Once again, the "new conservative" "blame the victim" mentality ruins all of the good this bill could have done. As I recall, such a study was done at the tail end of the Clinton administration, so I will use that as a starting point. One of the main difficulties I see is to combine the basic education needed to understand how to be a good, contributing citizen with the increasing need for everyone to understand our technologically advanced world. One can use a computer if they cannot divide 5 into 47, but they still need the basics to make wise decisions to weed out the garbage and keep the valuable stuff on the Internet (where the "80/20" rule applies).

The first two steps take care of passing and understanding information. The next steps involve removing the "politics of fear" currently all the rage in the US. There are two wars causing the US citizens a world of hurt, and I am not talking about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (although they are indirectly related). I am talking about the War on Terrorism and the War on Drugs. So much money has been wasted on those two foolish wars it could probably repay the National Debt (well, maybe not; that's a pretty big number in itself).

The War on Terrorism is, once again, a good idea gone horribly wrong. Terrorism is not a place or a thing; it is an ideology. You cannot fight a war against an idea. My plan is to return terrorism to its rightful place as a world-wide crime. Terrorists would be captured and prosecuted as criminals, not held as enemy combatants. Instead of a "war" I would strengthen the ability of the US to spot terrorists before they can attack. This requires listening to information I don't like, something the Bush administration consistently refuses to do. They knew about the threat of the 9/11 attacks, and did nothing. I am not going to consider why, because it doesn't matter; the attacks could have been stopped and were not.

I would also do away with the "terrorism warning system". No more "Level Orange" alerts. Terrorism works because its sole object is to spread terror. If we are not afraid of them, they cannot really harm us. One major thing the Bush administration did was to squander an opportunity after 9/11. Just after the attacks, most countries were behind us, ready with support. When the President did not get the cooperation he wanted for invading Iraq (which actually increased terrorism), he went anyway. Thus another item on the agenda is to go back to the UN and try to make amends with our allies. The US cannot stand alone against the world. We are strong, but as a whole the rest of the world is stronger. The best way to win a war, any war, is not to start one.

Lest anyone call me an appeaser, that does not mean I intend on going to those countries which now hate us (Iran and North Korea, to name two) and ask for forgiveness. What I mean to do is to repair our relationship with countries who were on our side before Bush took office. Even the British, Canadians, and Mexicans, our strongest and best friends, are hurt, indignant, or even angry with us over decisions we've made unilaterally in the recent eight years. I want to put the US back on an even footing with the rest of the world politically. That means re-signing treaties we used to be part of which George Bush has abrogated. It means realigning ourselves with the UN. Finally, it means being a good neighbor instead of the neighborhood bully by changing our rhetoric from "pre-emptive strikes" to more of a neighborhood watch. We've seen both sides, and we were always safer with our allies than going it alone.

Speaking of our "enemies" such as Iran, I believe it a giant blunder to refuse to talk to a country because they do things we do not agree to. Talking is the only way to gain and pass on understanding, a mutual understanding to remove or relax tensions between two different cultures. Of course, I will not quietly stand by and allow a country to continue with human rights violations (I am a continuing contributor to Amnesty International, after all). However, the way to stop these actions is education and gentle pressure, not call names and turn our backs. The Bush administration has made us bullies; I'd rather not bully people.

Besides, having our side heard depends in large part on how we treat our own people. The current administration is so hypocritical even a blind man can see it. I would work hard to uphold the rights of all people as stated in our Constitution.

The War on Drugs has been lost for years. We don't even win battles in it any more. There is a bigger drug problem now than we have ever had. The way to beat drug addition is a two-pronged approach, but both prongs have a similar goal: reduce the demand and you reduce the reason to use and purchase illegal drugs. Prong one: comprehensive treatment programs for "early" (i.e. first- and second-time) users of recreational drugs). Prong two: re-examine certain drugs, such as marijuana, with an open mind to see if they could be legalized. Marijauna, at least, has been illegal for almost one hundred years because of a circular argument: "It's dangerous, so we won't test it." If we don't test it, how do you know it's dangerous?

Let's compare alcohol to marijuana. They both impair your judgement. Both of them have long-term negative side effects (alcohol is linked to Parkinson's and other forms of brain injury; smoking any plant can cause lung cancer). Too much alcohol at once will kill you; that doesn't happen with marijuana. Alcohol makes users belligerent and likely to fight; marijuana makes users mellow. One could make an argument alcohol is more dangerous than marijuana. What I want you to remember is this: we tried to make alcohol illegal and it led to an increase in crime. I believe legalizing marijuana will substantially reduce the crowding in our prisons. See The War on Drugs fact sheet.

Interestingly, Congress has been willing to throw huge amounts of money at these two wars, but will not give a cent to education or preventive programs which would eliminate the need for the wars in the first place. That's idiotic. Whether you are aware of it or not, the United States leads the world in the percentage of its people in prison. That's right; despite China's bad press on this subject, we in the US put more people in prison, per capita, than any other country, even China. A good many of these are simple drug offenses such as possession.

A final word on this post: I do not believe we can safely pull out of Afghanistan and Iraq any time soon; their situations are just too unstable. However, I do believe we can set ourselves a set of goals to produce a phased withdrawal of troops within the next two to four years. I can't be any more specific than that because I don't have all the information (a lot of it is classified). One thing (perhaps the only thing!) I agree with the current administration on is this: publishing a withdrawal date is not a wise thing to do. However, if we set goals such as "When X number of Iraqi forces are ready to take over a specific region, we will remove Y forces" is not a timetable, and in fact is a necessary position to take or we'll be there forever.

More info on the Constitution at http://www.constitution.org/

Please visit http://www.constitution.org/ and consider donating. There are many useful links on this site besides the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

The start of something big; what I would do if I were President

With the Presidential election coming up, there's a lot to think about. The United States was once a highly respected and well-liked country, and we can be that again. The next President, whether it is John McCain or Barack Obama, has the chance to undo some of the damage the Bush administration has done to our reputation. More than just a chance, an obligation. I'd like to help myself, in my own small way. Since I can never be elected, I'll have to post my ideas about what I would do as President here.

There's so many things to repair, replace, or understand it's difficult to know where to begin. Therefore the first thing I would do as President is to find someone I can trust as an advisor. This person (or persons) would have to be a thinker, someone who knows government, and someone who knows how the US government works. Their knowledge base would have to be broad, because while the basic US government is arguably the best in the world (see the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights), we have managed to drift very far away from the path the Founding Fathers felt we should take.

This person would also need to be flexible, as there are things the Consitution does not take into account. Some situations, concepts, or technologies did not exist at the time the document was written. One obvious example is communication; in the late 18th century, the only method of long-distance communication was the written letter. Today we have the telephone, video, email and so much else. Therefore, strict constructionists need not apply; I want someone who can understand the general intent of Jefferson et al. and be able to apply that to the modern world with an open mind. This is tricky; how can one directly apply a document written in the 18th century to the 21st?

I list that requirement because this person or group of people would be the ones who recommend others to the Presidential Cabinet. One cannot start to change without the support of the various members of the Cabinet, who are meant to be the experts on aspects of running the country in which I have little or no expertise. I would like you to note two things.

First, I have not said whether people I consider would be of any particular party. Frankly, I don't care about the person's party affiliation as long as that person can do the job in a quality manner. Just to name two, I have considerable respect for Senator John McCain and State Representative Chris Shays of Connecticut. Therefore, all other things being equal, I would choose a Republican over a Democrat if the person is right for the job.

Second, I do not believe any member of the current Bush administration would be properly qualified. I say this because Messrs Bush, Cheney, and (until recently) Rove have made every effort to eliminate anyone who disagrees with their policies. Thus the current positions of importance are filled, or at least appear to be filled, with "yes-men." I do not think I could trust anyone who would not criticize me if I made a mistake. In fact, I welcome such criticism. I am not perfect; there are things (many, many things!) I know little or nothing about yet would have to make some sort of decision on them. How can I possibly ensure I've made the correct decision if everyone just says "Yes" without some sort of "Well, have you thought about..." comment.

A few random thoughts on the Cabinet, and then I'll end this post. Secretary of the Interior: Al Gore (if he'll take it). Colin Powell would have a position in my cabinet, whether Secretary of State or Veterans Affairs. The Secretary of Transportation would have to be someone who is strongly in favor of public transportation. For the Department of Energy, I would want someone who understands we must get away from burning things for energy (or at least reduce it drastically) in favor of more environmentally-friendly measures (fusion, wind, hydro, geothermal, asnd others). The Secretary of Labor would have to understand it is not possible to make a living at the current minimum wage, and that we have drifted too far into an extreme form of capitalism (I have a number of labor reforms to discuss). And last (for this column), the Department of Justice needs someone who will redirect our efforts from "blame the victim" punishments and more toward preventing crime in the first place.

I expect this will get some comments; see you next time!

Violating the Constitution: why are we afraid to call Bush on this?

This may be a touchy subject for some people, but it shouldn't be. Patriotism is not blindly accepting our government's word, but valuing our country and its principles (see the Wikipedia entry on patriotism and fighting for them. In light of that, I am going to look at the Bill of Rights, a document written by liberals. Whether you believe it or not, it's true. The conservatives of the time did not want to split from England; the people fighting for independence were free and forward thinkers. So, one by one, here's the fourth, fifth, and sixth amendments and how the Bush administration has violated them. I'll summarize at the end.

Fourth amendment: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. The USA Patriot Act violates this amendment in too many ways to list here. People are simply labeled by one man, President George Bush, as an "enemy combatant" and this right goes away for these poor people. While that more specifically applies to the Fifth Amendment (see below), the person's fourth amendment right against search and seizure, in particular their communications (wiretapping, letters being opened, emails) and their homes.

Fifth amendment: No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. As with the fourth amendment, one man alone, President Bush, decides who is an enemy combatant and thus not subject to this protection. Even those running the camps such as Guantanamo Bay admit the majority of people incarcerated there are innocent of any charge against them. They also cannot "take the fifth" and avoid self-incrimination. Thus they are also deprived of their due process rights and the protections of the Geneva Convention.

Sixth amendment: In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence. As stated above, the lack of due process also results in the violation of this amendment. These poor souls do not even know the charges against them, much less are they able to confront their accusers, cannot get witnesses in their favor, and they have no access to attorneys. Also, their right to a speedy trial doesn't exist; some of them have been incarcerated for seven years.

I am well aware there are some legitimate terrorist suspects in custody. We must determine who they are and punish them appropriately. However, a large majority of people held in these camps may well be simple farmers or shopkeepers. The truth is we don't know; our government hasn't even tried these people, much less given us any information. Further, how much useful information can one get from someone who has been in jail without access to an attorney or any other resources for seven or more years? And all of this is controlled by one man, one man who sees the world in only two colors, black and white, and two camps, good versus evil. Do we really want to trust our freedoms to this one man?

Our government is acting in a hypocritical manner. We tell every other country to pay attention to their human rights, and then we ignore our own constitution and do exactly what we tell other countries not to do. Although everyone stood with us on 9/11/2001, it didn't take long for this administration to ruin our reputation.

Another thought. Back in 1998, Bill Clinton went through impeachment hearings because he had an affair with a White House intern. Well, so have other presidents. Bill Clinton, no matter what you think of him, did not violate anything in the US constitution. Yet the Bush administration has repeatedly violated the fourth, fifth, and sixth amendments and only a very few people have had the guts to stand up and call these impeachable offenses. Many Democrats and Republicans have both become convinced their purpose is to get re-elected, not to govern according to the Constitution.

I am going to ask you to read two books: "Conservatives Without Conscience" by John Dean, and "Is There a Right to Remain Silent" by Alan Dershowitz. Then, make up your own mind.