I am new to both politics and political movements. I would have to state for the record that I am a Ron Paul Revolutionary. I have never voted in a Presidential election. The reason is just that, reason itself. I reasoned and I think correctly that up till this election cycle the choices for President of the United States were handpicked for us ahead of time by a powerful elite ruling class of people with a vested interest in the status-quo. This means of course that the President of the United States does not work for me so why do I care which one the elite put in charge of their rigged game. What possible difference does it really make in my life?
My only exposure to politics growing up was by observing my parents. They were military and civil service people so they tended to vote for Democrats who expanded government which provided mom and dad with job security so they were pretty faithful Democrat voters.
As an adult I did a lot more research into how the world works. From my technology and science focused perspective I find that governments are full of things we called in the military "boondoggles and SNAFUs." I have seen screw ups so big we had to use these special words so that it put what we saw in perspective. Waste is not an accident in the government, it is planned that way to make the business more profitable for the folks that own it.
I am not new to Ron Paul but I will say that I never thought he would get as far as he has in his Presidential bid. I am certainly glad that there are enough people that are not totally brain washed by the Goebbels-Rove mind control program that they can think for themselves. We might just have a chance to elect a man of Ron Paul's statesman like stature to the highest office in the land. It gives me a wee bit of hope. He can't transform the government as he prescribes on his own I can tell you that.
What I propose for Ron Paul is to take the lessons learned in this election with regard to the huge spontaneous growth of the Ron Paul Revolution and apply it to reduction of the size and scope of government. The technology of the day has outmoded the need for central planning in my opinion.
We have the technical ability to sense any problem in the country and identify the source and correct the problem without need for organizations that would do this for us. A government for the purpose of providing services that we cannot provide for ourselves is simply outdated and needs to be completely rethought, reexamined, and rebuilt.
What I propose is something of a bionic government. We need a government that is part human and part machine while using the strongest features of both. The human part is that which we are most used to, the politicians who will be in charge of oversight of the government and will make sure that our bidding is done. The human element will also be a plugged in electorate and one that can oversee the government and respond quickly to short comings. The web and the new interactive technologies that have evolved are the method by which we will stay plugged into the political process. This technology can be taken even further and can also help to organize responses to needs that arise that can be handled by the people of this nation without need for any government entity telling them what to do.
One of the largest sources for SNAFU in government in my observation is deliberate waste in order to preserve their administrative budget. This is a travesty and only those inside of the organization typically are aware of this source of waste. We need to eliminate any agency that has no clear purpose of course but the remaining ones must have oversight in place that cannot be bought off, and has no reason to look the other way when there is waste or abuse.
Cybernetics or robotics can be used as overseer for the government workers. If computers are used by all workers then software can monitor their computer use. The system can also track their access as it does already and can include use of government materials. The computer can be used to analyze and identify abuse and waste by government agencies in this way. There are similar methods in use for tracking and controlling workers that are being fashioned in the corporate marketplace at present and I would recommend rapid adoption of this as a means of cost control.
Cronyism is another huge source of waste. Programs can be used to scan relational databases for matches in telephone records or bank records or other utility records of all government employees so that all of their potential cronyism can be identified early on before it can cause harm to the public trust. There exist technologies that can oversee very large organizations and these can be used by oversight organizations like the GAO to closely manage these agencies without need for huge overseer goon squads.
National Security is the largest financial black hole in the known universe. I recall the day before 9-11-01 I was watching CSPAN and I heard one gutsy little Congresswoman talking to Donald Rumsfeld and asking him where was the 2.7 trillion in identified lost money in the Pentagon budget. Of course since that time this boondoggle has grown to far greater proportions. I do not have a current figure but I would venture to guess that it has grown by many more trillions of wasted and unaccounted for funds that someone like you and I will be ask to pay. I think that we can solve this issue with technology as well. The budgets are all done on computers and the GAO should have direct unrestricted access to any budget numbers they want in real time without any approval from anyone if their oversight program tells them that something is not right and a human should take a closer look. I am sure such a system is possible and truly must be implemented if we ever hope to have any accounting of the world's biggest waste in spending.
Close the Department of Energy and take their nuclear assets and sell them to the highest bidder who must be willing to take on government oversight but will privately manage these assets for the benefit of the United States. They will run them at a profit or close them down if they go out of business. Take the budget that was their's and cut it by 90% and then take the remaining 10% and use it to fund alternative energy start-ups that will provide the government an ongoing 10% of their revenue for the financial jump start once they are profitable and the government makes enough money from their 10% ownership that we have a nice trust fund from the successful companies that no annual tax derived budget will be needed eventually.
Close the Department of Education and sell any property that they hold and auction off their equipment. Use the revenue from this liquidation program to fund retraining programs for their workers. Return any funds in the pipeline to the states and let them take over education as it should be. Encourage homeschooling by making basic curriculum available online for download by parents. Foundations, Charities, and Trusts will take up the burden of higher education funding for less advantaged persons.
Close NASA. Liquidate their assets and then take the funds from the liquidation and set up a trust account to help retrain their employees. Take their last budget request and cut that by 90% and use the remaining 10% to fund space exploration technology start-ups. If I recall their last budget was in the area of 400 billion. Imagine if we put up an X-Prize type of program for the various goals we have for space with a total of $40,000,000,000 in annual prize money in the budget. I am willing to bet that we would be out into space for a fraction of the cost of NASA and with private for profit companies making this happen. There is no need for a huge bloated, wasteful, central planning driven organization that has no interest in providing the American people a profit like NASA in today's world.
I am willing to bet that these kind of technology driven solutions will help make Ron Paul's ideas of limited government possible for the people of this great nation. It will take all of us working together and getting realistic about what we want for our country. A lean and efficient organization always wins in business and the same is true for government. Today's technology can make this possible as in no other time in our history. We just need to get leaders like Ron Paul in office and get creative innovators in the business of streamlining our government and we can make this happen.
©2007 Michael McDonnough, all rights reserved. You must have written permission from the author in order to republish this work.
Published: Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Last modified: Friday, October 26, 2007
The views expressed in this article are those of Michael McDonnough only and do not represent the views of Nolan Chart, LLC or its affiliates. Michael McDonnough is solely responsible for the contents of this article and is not an employee or otherwise affiliated with Nolan Chart, LLC in his/her role as a columnist.
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Reader Comments:
Posted By: Walt Thiessen
Date: 2007-10-24 03:37:47
Welcome to the Nolan Chart, Michael! You have some interesting suggestions. Of course, the difficult part is that the moment you create this new "bionic" oversight structure, you also create a new power base. As Google (for example) have shown by their example, the larger and more powerful a data aggregator is, the more intrusive it can become and the more damage it can do. I wonder if your solution would trade one kind of governmental abuse of power for another.
Posted By: Michael McDonnough
Date: 2007-10-24 06:21:04
The difference Walt in what I suggest is that it is the government that is examined with the oversight and not the people. The data aggregator I suggest would not be human controlled but human monitored and the target would be internal not external to the world as the current growing security grid is. I would also suggest that all security cameras that are watching the public have their feed turned over to the public and be available just like any live cam is today with an unfiltered live feed of the area being observed. This way anyone that was watching the feed or was downloading it can verify the official story and there is no couple of frams grabbed and modified by the government when a major crisis is captured on camera. Technology is just a tool and it can be used or abused and we are the ones that should determine what is abuse and control the use of the technology.
Posted By: Walt Thiessen
Date: 2007-10-24 06:30:49
Yes, Michael, you are correct that technology can be used or abused. That's why I think it's critical to understand: who are the human administrators of the system you are proposing going to be? In other words, who controls the monitoring system?
If you're talking about having the government provide the monitoring service, the solution is clearly problematic. If you're talking about a private company providing the monitoring service, the problem is equally problematic. In both cases, there's no way to know whether the technology can be trusted for accuracy without the public having access to the inner workings of the system. So the question becomes...how do you prevent the technology from being abused?
The reason this is a vitally important question is that computers can be made to spit out any results that the programmers want them to spit out. Thus there must be transparency to the system, and I don't see anywhere in you proposal how such transparency can be accomplished.
Posted By: Michael McDonnough
Date: 2007-10-24 07:06:21
Like any proposal it must be discussed and the idea shared by enough bright minds that a solution can be reached. At present there are systems of this type already being deployed in corporations. Perhaps an open source solution is the answer. The point of the entire post is that we must come together and use all of our resources to solve the issue of big government. We have to get serious about streamlining the government in order for our nation to survive in a competitive world. The smaller and more efficient the better of course and the idea of programs for oversight is that it would reduce the number of human auditors but would not eliminate them entirely. The GOA currently has this kind of access but not the tools to make it effecient. The biggest hole of course is the Pentagon budget and most troublesome is the black budget. It these areas are not provided better oversight we will never be able to control spending. We do not even know how much government really cost us because of the layers of secrecy. A way must be found to handle this problem and retain operational security. There is a solution and we can find it but the people of this nation must demand it and vote for people in government that will make the hard choices like Ron Paul has shown that he can.
Human auditors have human weaknesses and have to be supported by non human backup in some form. The recent airforce defense procurement auditor suicide points to a glaring problem that must be addressed. Too often when people discover a problem they either turn away because the problem is so bad they do not want to be involved or the suicide. The technology I suggest that be developed would help in these situations as entry in the system can be biometricly controlled and the people in charge made aware of problems as they are discovered and not after they have been redacted by self serving middle management.
Posted By: Bob Miller
Date: 2007-10-25 06:02:47
Save us Ron Paul. We know you're not like other politicians. We're all stressed out.
NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - Worries about work and money are causing one-third of Americans to suffer from extreme stress, driving them to
overeat, drink, and smoke.
In an online survey for the American Psychological Association (APA)
nearly half of the 1,848 people questioned believe their stress levels
have shot up in the past five years, taking a toll on their personal
relationships, work productivity and health.
"We see stress as being an increasing problem," Dr Russ Newman, the
executive director for professional practice at the APA, told a press
briefing.END
What on earth could be causing Americans to be stressed out? Well let's see, could it be the cold blooded murder of a million people? Could it be that they're once-bulging treasury is not only empty but they're 150 billion in debt? The really good news my fellow Americans: it's just getting started. Paybacks are truly hell, right gang? Gang might be an understatement? It's more like barbarians.
Posted By: Rocketman
Date: 2007-10-25 18:57:00
And may I add to that since many experts are already saying that peak oil is upon us that we should also have x-prizes for new energy saving devices and energy producing devices as well. We need to investigate Joe Newman's energy machine, the Joe cell technology and anything else that might lower on oil demand rather that just wait until the last minute when we are all but out of oil.
Posted By: Bob Miller
Date: 2007-10-28 04:46:45
Wow! Better watch out Giuliani, Ron Paul is on the move.
Rudy Giulian 31% - Ron Pau 1% (10/23-24/07)
Save us, Ron Paul. If that Clinton guy gets back in the White House, he'll lead us Christian men down the path to damnation 'cause we do not have sex outside our marriages. Don't believe me? Just ask any of the almost 300 preachers who have been convicted of molesting children in 2006-07 alone. No telling what that number would be if run of the mill Christians were included.
Dallas Morning News (true, it is in Texas and they hate Oklahoma) is reporting that Oral Roberts University has had a few problems other than misappropriation of funds; seems that some two dozen abortions have taken place. That's only the number of one doctor's records. I just love hypocrites. "I'm not condoning it, but there are always justifiable circumstances." -Oral Roberts. 10/25/07 (the old man is back overseeing this sideshow while his son is with attorneys). God surely must gag every Sunday morning watching degenerates file into buildings they have had the nerve to call God's house.
Posted By: Jahfre Fire Eater
Date: 2007-10-28 11:08:55
Hi Michael,
Yikes! I hope your vision of a bionic government never gains traction in my lifetime. You claim to have some respect for reason then you advocate substituting sensors and automated responses in it's place. Yikes again. Anytime technology is proposed as a tool for managing individuals rather than empowering them to be less reliant on and subject to decisions that are imposed on them I have a strong viceral negative reaction.
If you have studied the way the world works yet you don't see how participation in the political process makes any possible difference in your life, I can only urge you to study more and use completely different resources as your study materials because so far the results have been less than flattering.
Have you read Human Action by Mises, or Empire of Debt by Bonner and Wiggin, or The Constitution of Liberty by F.A Hayek, or Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt or even better, Basic Economics by Thomas Sowell?
If you would be willing to share, I'd be very interested in just what the basis for your studies have been.
Thanks,
Jahfre Fire Eater
Posted By: Michael McDonnough
Date: 2007-10-29 06:23:40
Jahfre,
I have focused my studies on technology and science with special interest in physics. Political science has not featured very high on my priority list but I have studied some of Mises work available online and have read most of what Ron Paul has written. The technology oversight I envision is for government instead of the public as they deserve the closest observation since they are our servents and entrusted by us with our lives and property. I also see us having greater input and awareness of the goings on in government with this system I have envisioned. I do not see the problem. They point cameras at us all the time and surveil us. I simply think we should return the favor in kind.