1 - Comprehensive Tax reform
   2 - Tools for schools
   3 - Campaign finance reform
   4 - Tax on oil companies
   5 - Regulate Wall Street

1) Unified Tax Reform Theory

- Tying taxes to money i.e. what individuals and business actually possess is the cleanest, simplest, most equitable and most practical system of taxation. The nearer to actual money a tax is levied the fairer the tax will be; the farther removed from the source - such as on goods, earnings and activities -  the least fair and most subject to outside pressures, unjust prejudices, and political manipulation, it becomes. I propose two reforms:

a) Net Worth Tax- Replacing the income tax with a tax on net worth would provide immediate tax reduction for up to 90% of the population. It would be fairer, flatter and simpler. As investment capital would be taxed annually the much maligned and easily manipulated capital gains tax would disappear. There is no rational purpose in leaving accumulated capital untouched in order to tax current earnings at inflated rates. The concept of "double" taxation was merely a convenient fraud designed to shield the bulk of the wealth of the richest Americans from taxation, to keep their inbred advantages over everyone else intact to perpetuity. The only fair means of taxation is to tax all money in the economy every year.

b) Transactional Tax - As many others have suggested, a slight transaction tax on financial transactions would help eliminate the unhealthy, unproductive and ultimately corrupting speculative fever that has taken hold of the upper end of the financial community. We should go farther, however, and extend this tax down to include all financial and bank transactions to simple deposits and withdrawals. This fee simple would work as a sales tax or a user fee on money. It would be a highly progressive but extremely fair tax that could be used to eliminate, for instance, the regressive payroll tax. Such a tax would be simple, immediate, fair and have the additional affect of making banking more transparent and make the tax on net worth easier to collect.

If these two are enacted together they may not be easily evaded or loopholed. Other smaller taxes may still be employed to achieve desired societal or economic goals. In this computer age both these taxes will be easily applied and as they are unified in a single theory will not invite discontent as they do not hunt and choose among our citizenry, singling some out for protection and others for exploitation.

2) Tools for Schools - Place a newly designed student-grade laptop computer in the hands of every school child in America within five years. These laptops would be intentionally designed to do more with less. Using off the shelf technology they would not hook into the world wide web but be tailor-made for a newly constructed National Educational Internet - by putting on line in one place every bit and source of information that might aid and benefit our schools. This would knit together all our schools in a web of information, interaction and innovation. This system would do for education what computers have done for business and communications - revolutionize it from within and as a specific system customized to a specific end would be far more efficient in doing so. This would not be expensive yet would comprise the equivalent of providing a brand new interactive library for each school in America and then placing that library on the back of every child in America. The result will be transformational.

3) Campaign Finance Reform - This is the sine qua non of all reform for without it, without better people in office, no coherent reform of the system can ever take place.

Unfortunately with our current Supreme Court and a number of intellectually dishonest and bizarre rulings - money and bribery must be protected like free speech, and corporations are just like big ol', friendly giant people among us, for instance - most of the extremely modest but good faith attempts to control campaign finances have been intentionally, shamelessly scuttled on largely bogus grounds. For all that something must be done to let the public regain control of our political system and draw a much higher class and far more ethical type of person into it. That congress is totally beholden to big money, is at the root of most if not all of our problems. Some possibilities:

a) Simple Recusal. If not done voluntarily strict guidelines may be written which prohibit any member of congress from voting on an issue in which they have a stake, including having  received large campaign contributions from interested parties. This is not the case now as members of congress unlike any other deliberative body in America, greedily acquire every conflict of interest they can.  This will tend to dry up money from the supply side. Establish an ethics board outside of congressional control to monitor this as well as other ethical issues which face members of congress. This is obvious and not only should have been done long before this but both these reforms could be done tomorrow.

b) Public financing of campaigns. It can be argued that the Supreme Court as it is currently constituted has left the public with no other option but to take the corrupting middle men out of the electoral equation and pursue comprehensive public financing of campaigns in one form or other.

c) Impeachment. There are signs that some on the Court will try to abort all attempts to control the continuing corruption of the most corrupt congress in our history and even block the sole remaining option left, a sensible system of public financing. In that case we cannot afford to merely wait them out until a better Court may someday evolve. The status quo in congress, which is daily growing worse - i.e. more beholden to big money interests, as well as becoming more and more undemocratically wealthy itself as both parties recruit multi-millionaires to office - absolutely cannot be allowed to continue. In this case, the impeachment of one or more of the worst judicial impediments to reform must be instituted. That's why the constitutional authority is in the constitution. There are grounds. Several of those who voted against campaign finance, especially those who also voted against free elections in Bush v. Gore, have also been brazen in the crass politicization of their judgeships. This degrades the Court and is as unprecedented as it is unacceptable. Again, in this era of absolutes, these judges are markedly worse than any justices who've previously held their positions, even to the point of embedding their own family members in positions which inherently prejudice their ability to fairly rule on many cases which come before them. If these jobs are not nepotism they at least open these jurists wide to multiple charges of conflicts of interest. Such justices have made themselves likely candidates for removal.

Note:The government of the United States of America is not inherently evil or corrupt as some would have it - in fact it is nearly treasonous to suggest that it is - as America is nearly indistinguishable from its form of government. It was designed by political geniuses and has been our glory for our first 200 years, uniquely and infinitely flexible and adjustable to the changing needs of the country. But any system no matter well conceived is only as good as the people running it. No matter how well designed our government is it is still an inanimate object run by animate officials. It is ironic, to say the least, and quite telling, that the same ones found most dependably railing against our government today are the same ones who comprise among the worst politicians to have ever held these offices.  Yet they are also most reliably against all forms of campaign finance reform, which is the chief corrupter of the very offices they hold in such undistinguished fashion.  There may be a correlation between these tendencies.

4) Tax on Oil Companies - Their entire pricing structure is based on an anti-American cartel. There is an anti-free market OPEC tax on nearly every facet of our economy, every purchase, every product, every activity, ultimately enriching nations which don't mean us well.  Oil is unique. It is both ruinous to our environment and to our economy. 
    Some have wrongly maintained there should consumption taxes raised on gasoline and other oil based products. This is wrong. This punishes the consumers for circumstances over which they have no control. Oil companies must be directly penalized and taxed. It doesn't even matter if it is not the entire fault of western oil companies that they are in league with a foreign anti-competitive cartel. They are the ones profiting from the actions of the cartel whether they approve of its operations and goals or not. 
    True, these companies will earnestly try their unlevel best to pass any new expenses back onto the consumers and to the extent they are allowed to do this it will act as new consumption taxes. But it hardly follows then that they shouldn't be taxed at all. New consumption taxes would merely unjustly enrich them further.  But, in the first place they may not be able to pass all of them along to us. in the second, if they do it is far better that the public's ire at higher prices be riled upon those that truly are guilty rather than directed to the government which is not.

    Self-evidently, this revenue must be used to leave no stone unturned or innovation untried or resource untapped to free us from the deleterious scourge of Big Oil has on our economy, our environment and our government.

5) Re-regulate Wall Street.  Occupy Wall Street is perfectly correct that many of our current economic problems and injustices in our society have both their root and their culmination.  Others have written far more eloquently on the subject than I ever could. 

a) Rollback Rules. Set the rules back where they were when Wall Street actually may have worked for the American economy rather than as an enemy of it.  In other words stop their ability to get their fingers in so many of our pies. They have thoroughly proven that the do not deserve such capability. 

b) Cap the remuneration of executives of publicly held corporations to a proscribed percentage of the profits of the corporation. As they are publicly held, and their shareholders have too few tools at their disposal to reign these monsters in, if they want the benefits of selling shares on the public market these corporations must accept a greater degree of public responsibility and accountability. It falls to government to enact new regulations to ensure this is done until which time as shareholder rights have improved to bring these runaway wages back under some semblance of self-control. 

c) Rebuild America First. The American economy must be rebuilt at home first. Corporations that create jobs in America should be rewarded and/or corporations that outsource jobs penalized. Infrastructure improvement is long overdue.  A ten year program should be instituted to rebuild America  Trade agreements are no panacea to economic growth but generally serve as a net drain up.  on the American economy. We may be able to compete with anyone one on one but not everyone simultaneously.  It's illogical to believe otherwise. Most free trade agreements enrich a part of our economy at the expense of the health of the whole of our economy.

d) Forgive mortgage debt