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In my blag post titled, "The Economic Recovery Plan," I talked briefly about property tax and education reform and promised that there would be a post dedicated to this topic in the near future. Well today's you're lucky day folks! I realize that my opinions on education may upset educators and progressive liberals of all sorts. However, I believe that, in order to right the US economy, we need to have some changes to our primary and secondary education system.

First of all, allow me to say that I do not advocate much in the way of cuts to the education system across the country. However, I do believe that there are some decisive changes that need to be made in order to make the system more efficient and get more value for the tax dollars spent.

Part of the cause of the housing crisis in the United States is that school districts funding is based largely on the value of the homes in the area. Higher home values means higher property taxes, which means more funding for local schools. Thus, educators and everyone close to the education system have been trying to push property values up. This, combined with I-bankers' casino-like gambling in the housing market, lead to a huge housing boom. Sadly, this sort of boom is always followed by a bust, which meant a sudden and dramatic drop in housing values and the associated property tax revenue.

Coming up with a solution to the property tax problem alone is a conundrum. Is there really any other parameter under which property taxes can be calculated and collected, or would property taxes have to be abandoned and their revenue replaced by hikes in other taxes? The best alternate system that I can think of is basing property taxes on the number of people inhabiting each acre of land with respect to the population density of the surrounding area with separate rates for areas deemed rural, suburban, and urban. However, in the end, I'm not sure that this would be better than just throwing out property taxes and raising income and sales taxes to compensate. I just couldn't tell you for sure.

Regardless of what method of taxation was used, the proportion of wealth taken in by the states cannot continue to increase with respect to income. For years, states have taken in billions more dollars to try to help fund public eduction while the nation's infrastructure rots to nothingness (said the civil engineer). I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it doesn't matter how well kids know their multiplication tables when they're dying of Giardia or Cholera because the state chose more money for education over a drinking water treatment plant. While it's working out alright for now, the track we're on is just not sustainable.

So, without further ado, allow me to unveil my ideas for trimming the fat off education so that (maybe) we could have drinking water, sanitary sewer, and transportation systems that don't suck:

1. Eliminate Bilingual Education Programs. Since I would have already deported the illegal immigrants, this wouldn't be as big of an issue as it might seem. Any child holding citizenship status and not speaking fluent English would be put into a rigorous English immersion program.
2. Reduce the power of teachers' unions and certification boards. The goal of this change would not be to reduce the pay of teachers, who already take in the shorts monetarily. The goal would be to take down the institutions that keep bad teachers in the classroom. In order to create better value for taxpayers, we need to have the most capable teachers, and not just the oldest and most social powerful, in the classroom. Unions and cert. boards are made up, largely, of current teachers, who have their own interests in mind. A set of bad teachers can stay right where they are if they're also on the cert. board by keeping better teachers from becoming certified.
   
3. Change the cert. requirements for teachers. To the chagrin of elementary education majors across the nation, I would remove the requirement of having a bachelor's degree in order to teach elementary and middle school. Before you tell me that that would only reduce the quality of teachers, let me present to you the brilliant, but impossible alternative. I've met a few people, among whom there were plenty of education majors, who graduated from reasonably good colleges still being dumber than a bag of hammers and not knowing the functional differences between there, their, and they're, nor being able to find the People's Republic of China on a map. What the American education system really needs is consistent testing of intelligence and communication skills for teachers. Now, we go on a detour as to why this little slice of reason will never happen. In the case of Griggs v. Duke Power Co., a group of black workers sued the power company for which they worked, for using intelligence tests to discriminate against minority workers. The supreme court ruled that, under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, companies could not institute any selection criteria, including intelligence testing, that would cause minorities to be less likely to win jobs. (If you don't find this a little ridiculous, you're part of the "Don't confuse me with the facts," problem we have in this country.) This ruling made it functionally illegal for any organization to use intelligence testing as a selection criteria for employment, including certification of teachers. Now just to be clear, I'm not trying to recruit the best and brightest to be teachers. This would be absurd, based on the current salaries of teachers. After all, those who can't do teach. I'm just trying to make sure that we don't keep morons as teachers just because they were the best we had 12 years ago.
4. Remove competitive athletics from government budgets. I like sports as much as the next guy, but much like the Bowl Championship Series of Division I-A football, competitive sports are a large burden on our government-funded education system. All funding for competitive athletics would have to come from approved boosters. Left to its own devices, this system would unduly favor the children of rich parents, who are already over-privileged as it is. However, with this reform, I would also require that all booster contributions be pooled by the state and redistributed based on enrollment. This way, East High School (Denver) would get a similar athletic budget to Cherry Creek High and all other schools of similar size. If a rich family is going to buy new equipment for their son's football team, they're going to also have to buy new equipment for every other school in the state. Also, any program found not properly reporting its booster contributions to the state would have those contributions seized and would not be allowed to play for one full athletic season.
   
5. Open up a can of whoop-@$$ on textbook publishers. Any undergraduate can tell you, "The price of textbooks is too D@mn high!" This would take the form of not only taking measures to reduce prices outright, but also to prevent publishers from coming out with frivolous new editions. Restrictions would be placed on how often publishers could come out with new books, and if there wasn't enough new, groundbreaking material in a new edition, publishers would be required to continue printing the old edition and selling it at the same price.
6. Open up a slightly less intense can of whoop-@$$ on technology companies. In exchange for not having their taxes raised, makers of computers and software would have to supply a certain number of desktops, printers, tablets, etc. to states for use in public schools. Any proceeds collected from the potential tax hike on tech companies would be redistributed to the states for the purpose of funding education.
   
7. Construct schools with a contractual design life. Many school districts are not held accountable for how they use their school buildings and when they replace them. Districts would have to commit to how long they would use a school building. The longer the design life of the building, the more money the district would get from the state in order to build it. The only way that a district could sell a school building short of its legal design life is if the costs of repairing the building, in absolute terms, would be greater than the cost of a new building.

The purpose of these changes would not be to restrict or cut the public education system. My main purpose would be to stabilize the costs to taxpayers in order to help create an environment conducive to economic growth. With the increased tax revenue that would (hopefully) come from economic growth, money could be allocated to other projects, like the infrastructure that's vital to anything remotely resembling our quality of life in the United States. In the long term, I would hope that both the funding for education and other government-funded programs could continue so that we, in the United States, can continue to have the quality of life we enjoy.

Unfortunately, the reforms I list in this post are almost as unrealistic as the one that I suggested in the last post, most of them for similar reasons. I can only hope that the feds and states of United States of America can make some priorities that actually contribute to the welfare of its citizens, especially the middle class. Though, I'm pretty sure I'm going to start learning Chinese, just in case.

It Must Be My Birthday!

Over the last 3 days, my homie, Tyler, and I have been in Phoenix (in the middle of July, and yes it is hot) at the MLB All Star Game. Since it was the day after my birthday, my mom got us a pair of tickets on the 3rd base line. We flew out on Monday, saw the game on Tuesday, and now we're back in the Phoenix airport awaiting our returning flight to Denver. It's been a great time.

The only Colorado Rockie elected to the ASG this year was Troy Tulowitzki. We saw him walking in on the red carpet, when they introduced him, and in the game and took a ridiculous quantity of pictures. Also while we were there, I picked up a Troy Tulowitzki NL All Star jersey, which I am currently wearing. It was quite a bit of money ($125), but for an authentic jersey that's actually not too bad. Other souvenirs that I obtained include: an event program, a pair of pins, and a lanyard. I thought about getting a gold-infused Home Run Derby ball, but for $46, I decided to pass on that one.

And the NL won; 5-1. Self, great day(s).

The 3rd Degree

A little while back, I set a goal for myself that I'd like to get another degree in addition to the Master of Science in Civil Engineering that I'm going to get from Oregon State starting in the fall (Go Beavers). I've talked briefly about possibilities for a terminal degree, but I haven't really gone into detail. The way I see it, I have three options: A Ph.D. in civil engineering, a second master's degree in mining engineering, or an MBA.

Piled Higher and Deeper

Long ago, my mother suggested to me that I was too smart for industry and should instead enter into the shiny ivory tower of academia. To a certain degree, she's got a point. Wading through endless concourses of the bullfunky that contractors, governments, and lawyers dish out isn't my favorite part about the civil engineering profession, but I'm pretty sure that I'd still enjoy the heck out of it. However, I've been inspired on multiple occasions by professors who don't actually work that hard and don't make bad money doing it. Professorship is one of the few professions where you're paid basically on your ability to be a genius, which I think suits me pretty well.

My master's degree is going to be in geotechnical engineering, which means that it would save me time and energy to get a Ph.D. in the same. Like most other things, not all geotech grad programs are created equal. There are also some places where I just do not want to live, ever. Inasmuch as Boston, MA and Northern California are two of these, MIT and Cal would not be viable options even though they have insanely good research programs. At this point, the three schools which I would be considering are the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) in Atlanta, GA, the University of Texas in Austin, TX, and the newest addition, the University of Illinois in the Urbana-Champaign area of Illinois.

The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign academic logo.

I've chosen to add the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign because of a textbook that I purchased for the master's coursework that I'll begin at Oregon State. I bought Soil Mechanics in Engineering Practice by Karl Terzaghi, Ralph Peck, and Gholamreza Mesri. Terzaghi and Peck especially were at the forefront of the research that became modern soil mechanics and Mesri worked with them in earnest later in their careers. Well, Terzaghi was a guest researcher at the University of Illinois, Peck was a professor there for years before he retired and later kicked the bucket, and Mesri still does some research there at least in some capacity. The University of Illinois has a fantastic geotech group and the civil engineering program overall is ranked 2nd in the nation (behind the aforementioned Cal.)

Before I move on, allow me to say that I'm going to work in industry for several years before I even think about going back to grad school. Even if I can't get a job in geotechnical engineering, I'm still going to find something. I don't care if I have to work 35 hours a week at Taco Bell, I refuse to go back to school immediately following the master's degree. Considering that most of Dr. Benzeley's master's grads had jobs last August when I graduated from BYU, I feel fairly optimistic about my prospects. I also have the goal of getting licensed as an engineer which is probably more important to me than the 3rd degree. In order to get licensed, one has to have at least 5 (or 4 with a master's degree) years of experience working under a licensed engineer. In honesty, it'll probably be another 10 years before this is even applicable, but I have nothing but time to contemplate the future and my career goals, anyway.

If I do decide to get a Ph.D., I'm not going to try to matriculate during an economic downturn like right now, where demand for research is low and supply of cheap researchers is high. No, I'm going to try to ride a wave of economic prosperity, when there's plenty of government research money to go around and, comparatively, not a lot of people who want it, because they're all in industry, making money.

As a side note, the PhD webcomic is hilarious. They're also coming out with a movie that'll be screened at university campuses all over the country. Check it out.

More of the Same

At the onset of this blag post, you may or may not have wondered why I would consider getting another master's degree in mining engineering. If you've read this post, you know why, but for the rest of you, allow me to explain. I saw a show on the Discovery Channel a couple years ago about guys who blew up buildings for a living. Needless to say, I found this to be awesome and would not mind pursuing this as a slight career change.

Now, the guys who were on this show had Ph.D.s in mining engineering and had spent most of their years blowing up dirt for mining operations. Considering that I'm getting a master's in geotechnical engineering with a "minor" per se, in structural engineering, learning to blow up dirt and/or buildings would be right up my alley.

The programs that I think would be best for learning how the blow stuff up in a safe and professional manner would be either the Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T) in Rolla, MO, or the University of Kentucky in Lexington, KY. There's a guy or two at each of these institutions whose blasting research would pave the way to a prosperous career blowing crap up.

Massive Bullsh*t Ahead

At a time or two, I've thought about getting an MBA in entrepreneurship and/or engineering management and starting my own civil engineering consulting firm. Considering how many engineering firms I've seen close their doors and lay off their staff in the recent months, this isn't at the forefront of my mind. I'm going to keep the door open on this one, but I don't plan on visiting much, or anytime soon. I also have no idea where I'd want to go for it. I've looking into the programs at BYU, Georgia Tech, and Purdue, which would all be options, but really I don't have much preference at this point.

So there you have it. My options and plans for a third piece of paper that I can hang on my office wall, and more opportunities for people to say, "Wow, your* smart!"

* Yes, I did that on purpose.

Justice

Earlier today, a jury of her peers in Florida acquitted Casey Anthony (pictured on the left) of the murder of her nearly 3 year-old daughter, Caylee. Despite the chagrin of many across the country, I believe that the justice system of the United States and Florida reached the proper conclusion.

Before I go any further, allow me to say that, based on my knowledge of her life, Casey Anthony is kind of a despicable person and a burden on our society. She was a terrible mother, a habitual liar, and generally lived a life of deceit and treachery, opportunistically taking what she could from whom she could without remorse. She continued this deception when she was arrested multiple times in connection to the disappearance of her child and the various frauds that she committed in the mean time. There is a chance that she either killed her child, Caylee, or contributed in a significant way to her death, however, this suspicion alone is not enough to put her away for life, or to execute her, as the prosecution was seeking.

The biggest reason that I believe the justice system worked in this case was the evidence. There was no physical evidence that the child was murdered and did not die of natural causes, as Casey Anthony testified. Let's take a brief look at what the prosecution had:

• A hair that may or may not have belonged to Caylee Anthony in the trunk of Casey Anthony's car that may or may not have exhibited post-mortal behavior according to research from the University of Tennessee.
  
• A suspicious smell emanating from the trunk of Casey Anthony's car that was later found to contain a bag of garbage.
• Chemical analysis of the air from the trunk of Casey Anthony's car that found traces of chemicals "Consistent with a decomposition event" and chloroform. As a side note, scientists disagree about the exact chemical nature of air exposed to human decomposition.
• Google searches for "neck breaking," "how to make chloroform," and "death" from Casey Anthony's computer.
• Laundry bags, plastic bags, and duct tape similar to what was found at the crime scene were found in the Anthony home.
• A joke picture of one of Casey Anthony's ex-boyfriends drugging a woman with chloroform.
• Instant messages between Casey Anthony and now ex-boyfriend Tony Rusciano that may or may not have given motive.
• Imprints of old diary entries that spoke of how Casey Anthony was happy with changes in her life that had since been removed from the diary.
  
• A badly decomposed body identified as Caylee Anthony in a plastic bag with duct tape covering the skull in a wooded area near the Anthony home.

Now juxtapose this with what the prosecution didn't have:

• A solid cause of death.
• A murder weapon. (Which would be impossible to identify without a cause of death.)
• A confession.
  
• Any eyewitness accounts.
• Anything connecting Casey Anthony with intentional physical harm of her daughter, Caylee, in her death or at any other time.

Based on the evidence, I believe that Casey Anthony could not be convicted of murder even though she may have done it. Her motivations and alibis are sketchy, but the lack of real, physical evidence means that she should be only convicted on the counts of lying to the police, which she was. If we, as a society, genuinely believe the mantra, "Innocent until proven guilty," then we must consider Casey Anthony innocent, because she has not been proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. I congratulate the jury on ignoring the sensationalizing of the prosecution and examining the evidence as it really was.

Cases in the past have been successfully tried entirely on circumstantial evidence. However, I believe that this phenomenon is a departure from what the founding fathers of the United States had in mind when they established our legal system. Just because one has the motive and the ability to commit a crime doesn't mean that he or she necessarily will, and thus should not be convicted of that crime. If there is no real, physical evidence that a crime was committed, guilt cannot be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and as stated earlier, the suspect must be released as innocent.

This is where it really helps to be a man or woman of faith. I know that God holds all the possible evidence in the case of Casey Anthony and does not have to rely on a jury of her peers to enact justice. He has seen her works and knows the motivations of her heart, in all their strangeness. If she did truly murder her daughter, she will have to answer for this act and all her other perverse and sinful behavior before God and all others present, and will have to accept the punishments which are just.

At this point, I will leave the judging up to God and hope that Casey Anthony can change her ways before it's temporally and everlastingly too late.

Shamtrak

Let me start off this post by saying that Amtrak sucks. They don't actually go anywhere and do so while moving at a profoundly slow rate of speed. I will be glad to see its demise, which is fast approaching.

So about 6 months ago, I was planning on making a trip to Provo for the BYU engineering and technology career fair and after taking the bus on the previous trip, taking the train seemed like a decent change of pace. Let's just say that I was wrong. Dead wrong. My trip to Provo at the end of January and beginning of February was, by far, the worst travel experience that I've had in my entire life up to this point. If it had been any worse I probably would have gone postal in the middle of the Salt Lake Amtrak station. It was bad.

The ticket-buying experience wasn't too bad; in fact I'd venture to say that it was the best part of this trip. It definitely went downhill after that. About 3 days before I was set to depart, I found out that Union Station in downtown Denver was going to be closing for renovations the day after I left and that my return train was going to show up at some other random place 3 blocks down the road. As it turned out, that really didn't matter.

So, I show up at Union Station about 2 hours before my train was supposed to leave because my dad works downtown and it was fairly convenient for him to drop me off. I sit around and read a book while listening to the announcements that aren't even remotely comprehensible. On a side note, Union Station was an acoustic nightmare, which is probably one of the biggest reasons they needed renovations. Since I had no idea what was going on, I decided that I would go out onto the tracks at about the time my train was supposed to be there. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but when I got outside there were no trains or people or signs of life. The best part is that the doors through which I went locked as I left, so I was left to walk around the half-mile back to the front door of Union Station. Keep in mind that this was in late January and it was snowing with gale-force winds blowing snow right into my face.

After making my way back to the front door of the station, I asked one of the attendants what the heck was going on, since my train should have left half an hour ago by that point. He told me that the train was going to be delayed and that it was going to be another 2 hours on the profoundly uncomfortable wooden benches in the station. I decided to take a nap, which actually turned out alright.

So after showing up at 6 am and waiting for about 4.5 hours, my train came, I got on, and we crawled forward at a pace that I could almost have walked. Seriously, until we got out of Denver, we were averaging about 10 mph. Once we got out of Denver, we ramped it up to about 30. If there was any significant opportunity cost to my time, this would have been absolutely unacceptable. The ride itself wasn't too bad, though I didn't really eat anything because the food was so ridiculously expensive, which was probably part of the reason the train went so ridiculously slow. Between the station and the train, I probably slept 17 hours that day.

Then the fun really started.

When the 13-hour journey (literally) had finally run it's course, I got off the train and my friend, Steve picked me up from the train station. I returned to my former home in Sam's Town, and after about 10 minutes of trying to account for my stuff I realized that I had left my new, stainless steel wallet with my driver's license, credit cards, about $200 in cash, and in an incredibly stupid move, my social security card on the train. Somehow, after spending most of 13 hours in a seated daze, I wanted to remove the brick that was poking into my right buttock. This would have worked out just fine if I had put my wallet in the backpack that was sitting in the seat right next to me. But no, I just threw it in the seat right next to the backpack that would have ensured its safe arrival. Clearly not my most intellectually clear moment.

I called the main Amtrak line and then the Salt Lake Amtrak station. They said they'd look for my wallet, but surprise, surprise, they didn't find it. So, at this juncture, I'm 500 miles away from home with no money, having not really eaten much in the last 18 hours. Luckily, the Domino's in this college town was open late and my mom forked out her credit card number, or I would have been on a 4-day involuntary fast.

Oh, but it gets better.

After my dad had express-mailed (for $18) me a big wad of money that I was obligated to pay him back (plus $18), I went to the career fair and didn't find anything, because there are no jobs. At some point during my 4-day stay in Provo, I got a computer-generated voice message from Amtrak telling me that my train back to Denver was still sitting in San Francisco and was going to be delayed indefinitely. This was about when I was contemplating going postal in the Salt Lake Amtrak station.

At this point, I decided that, even if I could eventually get back to Denver on the Amtrak train, I didn't want to endure another 13-hour ordeal with untold horse-puckey throughout. I decided that I'd much rather just eat my Amtrak ticket price and get a flight on Southwest Airlines. (Let that be a lesson to you, kids. Sunk costs are sunk.) The ticket price on such short notice was like 80 or 100 dollars. I really don't remember, but I was definitely willing to pay it to get the heck out of this situation. The only problem was that, since I had lost my wallet, I had no form of government-issued photo identification. If there had been anyone within an arm's reach at this point, I would have strangled them.

This was one of the few times in my life that I was glad I ended up getting engaged to fiancée #2. We had planned on having a reception/ring ceremony in Boston, where she was from, then flying straight to Vancouver, BC, where we would have our honeymoon, then flying back to Salt Lake and starting up school again. Clearly, this didn't work out, but in order to fly from Vancouver, BC to Salt Lake City, UT, one must have a valid passport. In the process of wedding planning, I made my way down to the Utah County clerk's office, completed my passport application, and got my passport about two weeks later (without paying the expedition fee :). With this in mind, I booked a flight out of Salt Lake City and called my dad, who expressed me (for another $18) my passport so that I could get on my flight. I got another computer-generated message and email telling me that my Amtrak train would come a couple days after it was supposed to have come, but I had already made my decision by then.

So all pretty much went according to plan with my flight. Steve again took me to the airport, and I reimbursed him for his time and gas, to the tune to $10. I checked in, showed the gate-rapists my passport, had my junk fondled, got on the plane, and arrived safely back in Denver. As another interesting side note, the entire University of Utah women's basketball team was on this flight with me. Apparently the lower-budget sports don't get charter flights, like football would.

I mention this now, as opposed to 4 months ago, because yesterday (June 30th) I received a flat-rate envelope from FedEx containing a manilla envelope, which contained the five cards that were in my wallet on the Amtrak train. There was no further explanation, but it's fairly obvious what happened. Someone, either a patron or an Amtrak employee, took the cards out of my wallet and stashed them somewhere out of the way, while keeping the wallet and cash that was inside it. This is why there were no fraudulent charges on my credit cards, nor any accounts created in my name. All of my cards were riding around in an Amtrak passenger car until someone was thoroughly cleaning out the car and stumbled upon them.

The moral of the story: Rail is for freight, not passengers. Screw you, Amtrak! I will shortly celebrate your demise.

Independence Day

As most anyone with connections to BYU will know, BYU's football team is going independent in Division I-A football, with many other sports affiliating with the West Coast Conference. As you can imagine, I'm pretty excited about BYU football going independent and playing various opponents from all across the country. I'm also pretty stoked that BYU is coming to Corvallis in the fall to play Oregon State at Reser Stadium. I bought two tickets in the visitors' section of that game and I will be wearing virtually all blue with absolutely zero orange. I'm also contemplating making a sign that says, "OSU Grad Student" and below that, "(Guess where I did my undergrad)" with an arrow pointing down toward me. It would be legit. Anywho, there are some other things that I will enjoy about BYU going independent in football:

• Dusting my feet off on "The Mtn." TV network. Bad cameras, camera angles, and cameramen, are compounded by the terrible commentary.
• Getting rid of Mountain West officials. Through the years watching BYU and Mountain West football, I've seen terrible call after terrible call. As we liked to chant at LaVell Edwards Stadium, "I'm blind! I'm deaf! I'm a Mountain West ref!"
• BYU on ESPN. My Alma Mater has seven games on the ESPN networks for the upcoming season, most likely with more to come. People all over the country and the world will get to see Jake Heaps and the BYU offense steamroll "power conference" opponents.
• Referring to the Pac-12 as SpUtah's pimp. "It's unfortunate that SpUtah couldn't get permission from its pimp to have the Holy War game at the end of the season."
• Something that resembles a student section at LES. While I was at BYU, the athletic department always scattered the students about in order to optimize revenue. With BYU on ESPN, this is not an option and there will actually be a student section. [Scratch that, bad info]
  
• Leverage and options for conference bids. With conferences courting schools all over the place, BYU will have the power to negotiate with big six conferences like the Pac-12 and the Big XII if they would even want to entertain such offers.
• Independence. As with most other forms of independence, being independent in football will allow BYU to do whatever they want with their money and efforts without a conference commissioner lording over them.

This year, Independence Day comes a few days early, on July 1st. I will be sporting my various BYU gear in celebration and it will be a day of rejoicing in Provo and the BYU faithful all around the world.

Go Cougars!

The Economic Recovery Plan

There's been a lot of talk about how to regain some of the wealth and prosperity that have been lost and not as yet recovered in the United States. The federal government in its current form will never be able to do what it takes to enact a recovery, mostly because the politicians in congress only desire to represent about 20% of the American populace, on a good day. I've thought of some reforms that should cause the economy of the United States to grow again, get people spending, and reduce unemployment. Some of these are fairly extreme and I will not present those in this blag post. The proposals that I present here are the ones that I believe a majority of Americans could agree with that would also easily jump start the economy. Now, without further ado, allow me to introduce The Hands' Economic Recovery Plan, or THERP, if you will.

1. Enact banking reform that would forgive mortgage debt. Believe it or not, this is not the first time that economic recession and stagnation have been spurred by a boom and bust in the housing market. It happened in Japan in the early '90s. The economic woes continued for over a decade until the Japanese government enacted laws that remitted mortgage debt. Without this reform in the US, individuals and families would be prevented from spending on things other than their mortgages or moving when job opportunities present themselves. The economic stagnation we currently observe could continue almost into perpetuity with no change to the system. Banking reform won't happen under the current government system because bankers lose in this situation and most Republican politicians either are bankers or have very close ties to them.
2. Deport the illegal immigrants. Until any American can walk into Mexico/Guatemala/Honduras/etc. without any paperwork and demand jobs, government-paid healthcare and welfare, everything being printed in English, and the ability to accuse citizens of being racists when they point out that we're a leech on their society, I refuse to grant the same privileges to their citizens. Any child who's been granted American citizenship would be welcome to stay, however, his or her illegally present parents would not. They can either take the children back to their home country or give them up and we'll find them a nice home with Americans. Immigration reform won't happen because illegal immigration wins votes for Democrats and improves the bottom line for the C-level executives to whom the Republicans bow down.
3. Enact corporate tax reform. Basically, any wealth gained by corporations that came from goods and services produced and sold completely in the United States would be tax-free. However, corporations would be taxed on wealth gained from foreign income, foreign component parts used in American-produced goods, and imports at a rate slightly above the current effective corporate rate. This would give corporations incentive to create jobs in the United States instead of China, India, Mexico, etc. This reform won't happen because Republican politicians won't support anything that might ruffle the feathers of the top 2% of income earners.
4. Enact income tax reform. More specifically, I would enact unearned income tax reform. Paul the Apostle wrote in one of his letters to Timothy that, "The love of money is the root of all evil." In the contemporary western world, we have become obsessed with the notion that we can just "invest" money and make a living doing it. We desire to get something for nothing so badly that we are willing to ruin ourselves and everyone else around us to make it happen. I would tax unearned income (i.e. dividends, profit sharing, capital gains, etc.) at a rate at least as high as that for earned income. The goal of this reform would be to incentivize people to actually do something to try to earn a living, while still making some cautious investments. Once again, the Republican politicians' steadfast loyalty to the top 2% of income earners is to blame for the impossibility of this reform.
5. Enact property tax reform. Educators and other liberals would howl and moan, but in order to stabilize the housing market, we need taxation to not be based on property value. As sad as it might be, part of our economic plight is due to state and local tax rates being higher than they have ever been before. State and local governments would have to make due with less money than they currently take in. These governments could go a long way just cutting welfare and pork, but in the end, changes would have to be made to the education system. I won't be expounding on my thoughts on education reform in this post because this subject deserves more than just a token mention. Look forward to another post on this topic sometime soon. This tax reform won't happen because liberals have used the scare tactic, 'Think of the children,' at any mention of property tax/education reform, when we could undoubtedly give our children the same education for a better value.
6. Enact banking/investment tax reform. Basically, I would tax banks based on the riskiness of their investments. For corporate stocks, this would be easy, because investment bankers calculate a term, β, that essentially represents risk of such an investment. For futures, it would be even easier. The tax rate on futures would be inversely proportional to the proportion of the future value paid upfront. For example, if a bank put 3% down on an oil future, their tax rate on that future would be 97%. This would annihilate the profits of prospectors who pick up futures and deflect the costs by not actually putting up any money down upfront, drastically reducing the speculation in the market. For any other investment, it would take pages and pages of tax code to assess the risk of investments for taxation purposes. Mortgage-backed securities would also be made illegal, the sale of which would be punishable by death. Again, the top 2% of income earners would be upset about this reform, keeping them from ever happening.
   
7. Cut entitlements. The burgeoning budget deficit of the federal government is another dead weight on the US economy. Cutting entitlements would be key to reducing the deficit and the biggest of these in my sights would be growth in Medicare, not Medicare itself, but its growth. Limiting Medicare growth by itself could almost bring the US to fiscal solvency by 2015. Providers of care (to a certain degree) and, to a greater degree, of prescription drugs and specialty treatments would need to undergo reform in order to keep the costs paid by the American government low. These cuts won't come to fruition because Democrats use entitlements as one of their biggest selling points in elections.
8. Cut defense spending. Along the same lines as entitlements, the federal government could almost reach solvency by cutting defense spending. Cuts would have to come to expensive military research projects like new cruise missiles, fighter jets, and stealth ships. At this point in history, the United States is largely fighting guerrillas who live in caves. In all honesty, the military hardly needs a $1 billion cruise missile to take them out. Also, tactics of war would have to be employed in order to actually conquer enemies and get troops home in a timely manner. War is dirty, unsafe, and emotionally depraved; anyone who thinks otherwise should get over themselves. The blame for this one falls on both sides of the aisle. Republicans refuse to give up pricey research projects while Democrats (and the liberal media) refuse to allow war to actually take place for the long-term safety of both troops and the American people.
   

All of the reforms that I have mentioned above would have winners and losers. However, the purpose of a government is largely to balance the winners and losers of various reforms in a manner that best ameliorates total human suffering. In many cases, the losers in the scenarios above have been winners big enough and for long enough that they have amassed fabulous wealth and have begun to exercise the power that comes with that wealth over the remainder of the population. This phenomenon has become the greatest cause of our social and economic woes as citizens of the United States. The reforms that I have mentioned would go a long way to fulfill the purpose of a government and ameliorate the total human suffering in this country.

As you can imagine, neither I nor any one individual is in a position of supreme power over the United States and its allies. However, I do believe that the reforms, which I have mentioned herein are in the best interest of the people of the United States with whom the power of government is supposed to reside. Now, go inundate your congressperson with commentary on how worthless and filthy of a swine he or she really is. ;D