Budding Politician

Between the Occupy movement, the killing of Qadaffi, and the Republican debates, my head is all in a whirl.  I'm trying to just vacuum my house and clean the handprints off of the lightswitches, but my mind keeps wanting to decide who I will vote for President in 2012.  It might be time to turn down NPR in the car so I don't get too rustled up so early in the game.

The thing that has me most nettled from yesterday's NPR splurge, was a comment by a man in the Occupy movement who said he was frustrated with how a congressional vote went the night before.  He said all the Republicans voted the party line and all the Democrats voted the party line.  He argued that there was no way each of the congressmen and women were voting the way their constituents would want them to or else there would have been some cross-over.

This representative democracy of ours can be irksome at times.  It can be very disempowering to have to put a check next to a name that represents what you want 55% of the time while trying to ignore the 30% of what you want on the other side of the ticket.  And that leaves a whole 15% of what you are concerned about completely unaddressed.

So I was thinking as I was vacuuming about how we can put a little more power back in the people's hands.  I thought, wouldn't it be great if a certain percentage of our taxes were, in a way, given back to us, to place in whatever program we believed in.  So the government makes us give them $1000.00.  And then in April they send us an email that says, what government endorsed charitable programs would you like your $1000.00 to go to and how would you like your money split up.  A person could give $200 to fund early childhood education, $400 for healthcare for the underpriviledged, $200 for contributions to the arts, and $200 to college grants.  All of the organizations might get a minimum lump sum from the government, but everything on top would only be covered if the people approved of your program.  And if a little forced donation motivates folks to want to do their own independent donating to make sure their program is a winner, fantastic.

There is my 9-9-9 plan - except I'm talking spending, not earning.  Talking about spending is waaaaaay more fun.  Just call me a budding politician.