A new way to legislate

Citizens have begun to write to me with their ideas for improving government. So I've decided to post their offerings on my campaign website. I said to myself "Maybe we don't need any more top-down solutions to the nation's problems. We should start from the bottom -- with the people. Let them craft the solution. Just as Wikipedia lets people correct and improve and enhance the details of any topic, the people will be able to do likewise, through my website on the internet. It would be like a congressional committee-of-the-whole, working out the fine points of a bill. Any input by paid lobbyists would have to be footnoted as such. We would pass on the finished material to congress to save it a lot of time and effort and provide the kind of clarification and guidance the nation's legislators need to develop really good laws."
The first detailed idea has come from campaign volunteer Landon Carpenter. He's an electronics engineer who tells me he's considering writing an opinion column called The Village Idiot Speaks. He offered me a sample: a WPA (Works Project Administration or CCC (Civilian Conservation Corp) kind of solution to using the oil supply in Alaska, and ending our dependence on foreign oil. Here’s his plan:
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The Village Idiot Speaks

Most of us are too young to remember The New Deal. For those of you who can’t remember, it was the arrangement that gave us Social Security and the CCC and WPA.

It’s time for The New Deal Part II.

What the heck am I talking about?

Basically, the government is in a position to eliminate high gas prices and provide jobs and training for everyone that wants it. How, you might ask?

1. Sink a few wells in ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge)
2. Man them with conscripts or paid volunteers similar to the military
3. Provide living quarters, medical, and partial pay to workers while active
4. Build the required pipelines, refineries, and infrastructure with these personnel
5. Maintain ownership of all infrastructure and oil/gas supplies by the government
6. Sell the Fuel/oil to the public at market prices
7. Re-invest the profits into the system with a substantial part of the profit used
to pay down public debts
8. Do not involve private industries in the process
9. Hire a czar to oversee the entire process with the interest of the public as his only
thought
10. Use only conscripts/volunteers to carry out the entire process including transport and security

Notice: I said give the workers partial payment. These workers would live in government housing, eat government food, get free medical care, and be given 25% of their pay while active. When their term of service is over, give them the remaining 75% of their pay which would be held in interest bearing escrow accounts until departure.

Once the fuel supply is up and running, a 50 cent per gallon tax would be imposed on all middle eastern gas supplies.

Tax breaks of 2-1 on cost would be given for green alternatives such as large solar panel fields in the high dessert and large expanses of unused land like the southwest.

Special Small Vehicle Laws should be passed for micro vehicles to be used in cities and prohibiting their use on expressways. If you must commute by yourself, do it with a smaller carbon footprint.

Small vehicles could be designed to travel under 60 MPH and take less steel while providing affordable energy conserving technologies.

It would take a few years to catch up. But, when this happens, we could tell the Middle East goodbye.

This should bring down gas prices, employ everyone that wants a job, and quit paying good American money to Arabs that might be planning to fund terrorists.

That’s all for now.

The village idiot has spoken.
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Diamond comments:
I am not going to pretend that I have the answers to all of the big questions facing our society today.
But I am inviting more people to participate in this interactive form of developing legislation where citizens can use my campaign website to make a proposal and other citizens can comment on ways to improve the idea. Of course, after I’m elected these will be provided to Congress for its consideration. I may offer personal comments on an idea but that doesn’t necessarily mean I will support it. I’ll review each one carefully and look forward to receiving more of them as the days and weeks go by. I think it could generate big results: grassroots legislative solutions to our country's problems.

Go to campaign website

For the original Presidential campaign website -- with details of "How I Will Win the GOP Nomination" and "How to Solve the Shortage of Organs for Transplant" -- go to:

davidfdiamond.blogspot.com

Thanks.