I covered the BIG 3 Platform stances yesterday (Death Penalty, Abortion, 2nd Amendment). Today I will talk about a few other stances I have on issues important to Americans.
Social Security - At this point people are living longer and fewer workers are working to support the increase in retired Americans drawing Social Security. The Social Security Administration has been using the interest on its securities to cover the shortfall since 2010, but the fund will currently run dry by 2033 if we don't do something to fix the program, as without a fix, they will need to use the securities themselves to pay out, and eventually the money will be gone completely and we will no longer have enough to fund those receiving benefits.
What's the fix? There are many ways the program can be changed to make it viable again. The most common sense one that I believe in is to raise the maximum taxable earnings limit for paying in to the Social Security Program. In 2018, that limit is $128,400. So everyone making more than that amount pays in no more than those making that amount. A problem we have in this country is that the top earners seem to have all of the loopholes to avoid paying into programs that support Americans. Keep the Social Security Tax percentage the same, but take away the maximum taxable earnings cap. Someone making $128,400 pays in around $7,960.80, and someone making $250,000 pays in $15,500 to the program. Taking the cap away completely or severely raising the cap to a much larger earnings number could essentially provide an immediate fix to the problem without drastic change needing to occur.
Education - Boy is this a hot button issue across the country. Here are some things I think we need to do as a country to improve our Educational System. I am going to start out simple and work my way up to the bigger items:
1. Give Homework - Many schools seem to be going away from giving homework like we used to expect. There is more communal learning going on where the class works together to complete work. The simple fact is, someone is not going to excel at something without individual practice. We need to get back to a more traditional form of teaching. To add a personal story, my oldest daughter was in an accelerated math class in middle school years ago, and she was bored to death. I asked her why she didn't feel challenged, and what she said surprised me. There were a couple of students in the class who weren't catching on as quickly as everyone else, and the teacher said that they would not move on to the new material until everyone in the class understood the current material and was ready to move on. That method is unfair to the majority of the students who put in the work at school and at home to ensure they understood. Forcing the majority to "sit and wait" for a couple students to catch up is unfair to the class as a whole. Having those two students come in after school, do extra work at home, come in before school, etc.; that is the right answer. The wrong answer is to hold everyone else back while you wait for a couple people to catch up.
2. Stop Common Core - We need to get back to traditional teaching techniques that worked, and worked well, before Common Core was introduced to the world. Common Core is a ridiculous thing that simply needs to go away forever.
3. Go Back to 1 Standardized Test Per School Year - Remember when we all took one standardized test each year? Those were the days. Teachers are to a point where they can't teach kids because there are so many testing requirements built into the curriculum. Grade School Teachers need helpers in their rooms because they constantly have to pull individual students aside and test them. It seemed to work so much better back when teachers had the time to teach and everyone learned. Now, time is being taken away from teachers, and therefore students aren't learning as much as they did years ago.
4. Bring Back the Trades in High School - Across the United States you used to be able to take classes at vocational centers for high school credit in many counties. You could take the building trades and actually assist in building homes in the community. You could take mechanics courses, nursing, computer programming, distributive education, childcare and more. Many of those programs have disappeared over the years, and it would be greatly beneficial to bring them back.
The simple fact is, funding isn't where it needs to be for schools. States and the Federal Government have cut funding for schools so much over the years, schools struggle in many communities to stay open, let along provide meaningful education while forced to meet all of the standardized testing and other requirements set forth by the government. Schools often operate on a per student basis for money, and that has caused schools to go to a very bad student to teacher ratio, as with many companies, they are expecting less teachers to do more work.
There are many changes that need to be made to public schools, and charter schools are not the answer. Lifting up our public school system to what it used to be by cutting out some of the bloated requirements is where we need to get to as a country. We used to be the best in the world, and now we are no where near the best, to no fault of the great teachers out there.
Immigration - Here's another hot button issue we face as a nation now. Where do I fall on the spectrum. Let me start by saying that I do not want the Great Wall of Trump to be built on the Southern Border.
I believe in border security. I believe that we need to provide the manpower and technology (drones, search equipment, cameras, etc.) to the border to ensure we can provide the proper level of border security. Where I think we go sideways is in thinking that the majority of the people who are in this country illegally come over the Southern Border on foot.
The Center for Migration Studies (CMS) said in a report that crossing the border is not the way the large majority of persons now become undocumented. Two-thirds of those who joined the undocumented population did so by entering with a valid visa and then overstaying their period of admission, the center reported.
Overstays have exceeded those entering illegally every year since 2007, the center also stated.
So as a country we need to decide where to stand on Immigration. We need to ensure we have a manageable process to follow in order to gain citizenship in the United States. We need to have clear and reasonable limits on the amount of immigrants we will allow into the country each year. We need to have a humane process for dealing with those immigrants who are showing up at our border because they are fleeing persecution or other horrible things. As human beings, we should not be able to send a family back into a situation where they will surly die. That shouldn't even be an option. We must work with our allies around the world, and identify proper solutions to these problems.
There are countries in this world that are persecuting their citizens, senselessly killing innocent people in order to keep the population in line, starving their citizens, and much more. Major allies and the United States need to sit down and address these atrocities around the world in order to get these people the ability to live normal lives and not live in constant fear.
We do need to crack down on those who overstay their visas, and those who try to illegally cross at the borders of our country, but we can do both of those things in a manner that doesn't involve a great wall, or the separation of families.
Healthcare - Why is the United States one of the only developed nations that doesn't offer Universal Healthcare in this world? Probably for the same reason we measure things by inches, feet, and yards rather than transitioning to what the rest of the world uses because they recognized that counting by 10's was far easier. We just have to be different.
It can work if it is managed properly, and in many cases, the countries that do the best are the ones that concentrate more on preventative care as a means of catching things early and preventing larger things from happening. Often times in the United States, people don't go to the doctor as often because they don't have good coverage, and by the time they go in it is because they are so sick that they just don't have another choice.
If we had Universal Healthcare with a focus on preventative care, costs would go down over time as people started using the preventative care provided to them. This is a program that has worked in scores of other countries, but we still say, "Nope! It can't work in America. There are people who wait forever to receive care in other countries and ....blah blah....horror story after horror story". Really? There have been multiple documentaries done that have proven that Universal Healthcare is exceptionally better than what we have.
So although unpopular with those on the Right, I am 100% for a well formulated Universal Healthcare Program in the United States.
Ok, so there was a few more platform positions for you. I will continue to blog my platform for the next couple of blogs until I get all of my stances out there. I don't want to make any one of my blogs too long, which is why I am splitting it up.
Thank you for reading! Until Next Time....
DUNK
Social Security - At this point people are living longer and fewer workers are working to support the increase in retired Americans drawing Social Security. The Social Security Administration has been using the interest on its securities to cover the shortfall since 2010, but the fund will currently run dry by 2033 if we don't do something to fix the program, as without a fix, they will need to use the securities themselves to pay out, and eventually the money will be gone completely and we will no longer have enough to fund those receiving benefits.
What's the fix? There are many ways the program can be changed to make it viable again. The most common sense one that I believe in is to raise the maximum taxable earnings limit for paying in to the Social Security Program. In 2018, that limit is $128,400. So everyone making more than that amount pays in no more than those making that amount. A problem we have in this country is that the top earners seem to have all of the loopholes to avoid paying into programs that support Americans. Keep the Social Security Tax percentage the same, but take away the maximum taxable earnings cap. Someone making $128,400 pays in around $7,960.80, and someone making $250,000 pays in $15,500 to the program. Taking the cap away completely or severely raising the cap to a much larger earnings number could essentially provide an immediate fix to the problem without drastic change needing to occur.
Education - Boy is this a hot button issue across the country. Here are some things I think we need to do as a country to improve our Educational System. I am going to start out simple and work my way up to the bigger items:
1. Give Homework - Many schools seem to be going away from giving homework like we used to expect. There is more communal learning going on where the class works together to complete work. The simple fact is, someone is not going to excel at something without individual practice. We need to get back to a more traditional form of teaching. To add a personal story, my oldest daughter was in an accelerated math class in middle school years ago, and she was bored to death. I asked her why she didn't feel challenged, and what she said surprised me. There were a couple of students in the class who weren't catching on as quickly as everyone else, and the teacher said that they would not move on to the new material until everyone in the class understood the current material and was ready to move on. That method is unfair to the majority of the students who put in the work at school and at home to ensure they understood. Forcing the majority to "sit and wait" for a couple students to catch up is unfair to the class as a whole. Having those two students come in after school, do extra work at home, come in before school, etc.; that is the right answer. The wrong answer is to hold everyone else back while you wait for a couple people to catch up.
2. Stop Common Core - We need to get back to traditional teaching techniques that worked, and worked well, before Common Core was introduced to the world. Common Core is a ridiculous thing that simply needs to go away forever.
3. Go Back to 1 Standardized Test Per School Year - Remember when we all took one standardized test each year? Those were the days. Teachers are to a point where they can't teach kids because there are so many testing requirements built into the curriculum. Grade School Teachers need helpers in their rooms because they constantly have to pull individual students aside and test them. It seemed to work so much better back when teachers had the time to teach and everyone learned. Now, time is being taken away from teachers, and therefore students aren't learning as much as they did years ago.
4. Bring Back the Trades in High School - Across the United States you used to be able to take classes at vocational centers for high school credit in many counties. You could take the building trades and actually assist in building homes in the community. You could take mechanics courses, nursing, computer programming, distributive education, childcare and more. Many of those programs have disappeared over the years, and it would be greatly beneficial to bring them back.
The simple fact is, funding isn't where it needs to be for schools. States and the Federal Government have cut funding for schools so much over the years, schools struggle in many communities to stay open, let along provide meaningful education while forced to meet all of the standardized testing and other requirements set forth by the government. Schools often operate on a per student basis for money, and that has caused schools to go to a very bad student to teacher ratio, as with many companies, they are expecting less teachers to do more work.
There are many changes that need to be made to public schools, and charter schools are not the answer. Lifting up our public school system to what it used to be by cutting out some of the bloated requirements is where we need to get to as a country. We used to be the best in the world, and now we are no where near the best, to no fault of the great teachers out there.
Immigration - Here's another hot button issue we face as a nation now. Where do I fall on the spectrum. Let me start by saying that I do not want the Great Wall of Trump to be built on the Southern Border.
I believe in border security. I believe that we need to provide the manpower and technology (drones, search equipment, cameras, etc.) to the border to ensure we can provide the proper level of border security. Where I think we go sideways is in thinking that the majority of the people who are in this country illegally come over the Southern Border on foot.
The Center for Migration Studies (CMS) said in a report that crossing the border is not the way the large majority of persons now become undocumented. Two-thirds of those who joined the undocumented population did so by entering with a valid visa and then overstaying their period of admission, the center reported.
Overstays have exceeded those entering illegally every year since 2007, the center also stated.
So as a country we need to decide where to stand on Immigration. We need to ensure we have a manageable process to follow in order to gain citizenship in the United States. We need to have clear and reasonable limits on the amount of immigrants we will allow into the country each year. We need to have a humane process for dealing with those immigrants who are showing up at our border because they are fleeing persecution or other horrible things. As human beings, we should not be able to send a family back into a situation where they will surly die. That shouldn't even be an option. We must work with our allies around the world, and identify proper solutions to these problems.
There are countries in this world that are persecuting their citizens, senselessly killing innocent people in order to keep the population in line, starving their citizens, and much more. Major allies and the United States need to sit down and address these atrocities around the world in order to get these people the ability to live normal lives and not live in constant fear.
We do need to crack down on those who overstay their visas, and those who try to illegally cross at the borders of our country, but we can do both of those things in a manner that doesn't involve a great wall, or the separation of families.
Healthcare - Why is the United States one of the only developed nations that doesn't offer Universal Healthcare in this world? Probably for the same reason we measure things by inches, feet, and yards rather than transitioning to what the rest of the world uses because they recognized that counting by 10's was far easier. We just have to be different.
It can work if it is managed properly, and in many cases, the countries that do the best are the ones that concentrate more on preventative care as a means of catching things early and preventing larger things from happening. Often times in the United States, people don't go to the doctor as often because they don't have good coverage, and by the time they go in it is because they are so sick that they just don't have another choice.
If we had Universal Healthcare with a focus on preventative care, costs would go down over time as people started using the preventative care provided to them. This is a program that has worked in scores of other countries, but we still say, "Nope! It can't work in America. There are people who wait forever to receive care in other countries and ....blah blah....horror story after horror story". Really? There have been multiple documentaries done that have proven that Universal Healthcare is exceptionally better than what we have.
So although unpopular with those on the Right, I am 100% for a well formulated Universal Healthcare Program in the United States.
Ok, so there was a few more platform positions for you. I will continue to blog my platform for the next couple of blogs until I get all of my stances out there. I don't want to make any one of my blogs too long, which is why I am splitting it up.
Thank you for reading! Until Next Time....
DUNK
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