Eastwood 2000
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   The following is the Presidential campaign speech so many of us wanted to hear in 2000. As you know, neither of the two main contenders [pretenders] to the throne discussed many of the following issues in any depth, if at all. Perhaps if they weren't such the puppets of America's wealthiest families, either may have been able to speak in a scientifically rational way about the course they would like to chart for America.

   ThEgghead Alliance tried to draft Clint Eastwood but alas, ... he refused. Probably too busy creating something important like Space Cowboys to take part in trying to save the planet from limitless greed and blind promiscuity ....

ACCEPTANCE SPEECH 2000

   Perhaps the greatest fault of our current leaders is their lack of concern for this planet we call home. The way our species interacts within the biosphere must be altered immediately & I plan on making this the cornerstone of my Presidency. Allow me to sketch a brief synopsis of our species' history, so that more of us have an idea of where we stand in a historical context.

   Approximately  ten thousand years ago, individuals within our species began cultivating land for agriculture purposes.  At this time there were an estimated ten million of our ancestors scattered across the earth at the most.

   ~200 years ago, as the Industrial Revolution was sputtering into life, our species' population breached one billion, a hundred to a thousand-fold increase since the "Agricultural Revolution" some ten thousand years earlier.

   Today there are over six billion of us, and the poisonous byproducts of the Industrial Revolution are accumulating not only in the biosphere, but in ourselves as well.

   This exponential growth of our species is perhaps the most obvious example of how we have become a threat not only to all other forms of life, but also to ourselves. We have no idea how many people this planet can comfortably support and who among us wants to find out the hard way?

   We're already seeing the first stages of a global climate shift. These changes may be beneficial, but in reality, we have no idea what may take place. With the largest economy in the world, America's influence upon the global ecosystem is disproportionally enormous as well. Our nation spews out 25-30% of all greenhouse gases, & yet Americans make up only five percent of the world's population.

   It seems to myself, we're watching the Republicrats fight over who is the closest to the political center. I will have none of that. "The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be...the nation & the world are in dire need of creative extremists."[Martin Luther King]

   For example, instead of creating laws stifling the use of fossil fuels, I propose we make all products & industries involved with the development of sustainable energy sources, [solar, wind, biomass, geothermal] tax-free. Regulation is often a failure, but we can encourage people to move forward with carrots instead of sticks and help give birth to an entirely tax-free market in sustainable sources of energy.

   This is the America I hope to build if Congress allows me to. Not a nation powered by two or three non-renewable sources of energy, but a nation powered by a mosaic of energy sources. Windpower on the plains and coastal areas where applicable, solar in the south, geothermal in the Midwest and Northeast, and biomass wherever appropriate.   [See Scientific American, Energy from the Sun, Sept., 1990]

   My proposals for "greening" our nation are not simply technological. I believe it is time we begin practicing sustainable agriculture in this country. Many of the world's most knowledgeable scientists are at the vanguard of this movement.

   Unfortunately, the producers of artificial fertilizers & pesticides, [special interest groups] have been able to thwart any change in American agriculture as of this date.

Today's industrial agriculture produces a bountiful harvest -- food enough for our country & for export abroad as well. But industrial agriculture's dependence on chemical pesticides & fertilizers is also producing damaged soil, depleted groundwater, polluted rivers, & impoverished rural communities. (I am promoting) a new vision for agriculture -- one that views agriculture as a system working in harmony with the environment while continuing to be highly productive. This kind of agriculture would be sustainable far into the future. (We must work) to transform government policies so that they support sustainable agriculture as they have long supported industrial agriculture. [-Union of Concerned Scientists -http://www.ucsusa.org/]

    Another way we can curb global warming is by ending the current [3.5] billion annual subsidy to the timber industry. In essence, we make their profit margins higher by spending the taxpayers' money, your money, to create roads no one but the timber interests need. If I become President, & Congress agrees, not only will this subsidy stop, but almost all other forms of "corporate welfare" will as well.

   You see the problem with creating a sane government, one that will benefit all of us in the long run, is the entrenched interests who are making money hand over fist with the status quo. They resist change, not because these changes are illogical or unscientific, but simply because they stand to lose vast sums of money.

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   I plan on changing all of this if Congress will allow me. The time has come for a President who takes into account the entire nation & is not simply another puppet of the lobbyists on Capital Hill. It is time to end this charade here & now.

   Next up, how about if we begin to seriously promote recycling? Let us take a look at other countries that have successful economies & make recycling a major part of the way they do business. It seems in nations where landfill space is severely limited, they have created packaging revolving around plastics which can be almost instantaneously recycled. There are several different grades & essentially any form of packaging is recyclable. This could easily become part of our own economy within a year or so. The problem is many special interests, those that produce non-recyclable goods, will have nothing to do with it.

   When it comes to taxes, both parties have allowed taxes to be cut across the board, even though the wealthiest 1% of the American people own over 40% of her assets.

   If you want a tax cut, how about exempting those who make less than 15K annually, while raising Federal income tax rates progressively, dollar by dollar, until it effectively caps net worth for the wealthiest Americans? Is Rush right, or Robin Hood? 

   America prospered during the 80s under Ronald Reagan, but at what price? The total Federal debt grew from one trillion in 1980 to [four, five] in [1988,1992]. The economy has also prospered under Clinton, but sensibly & with far more fiscal discipline. As much as the conservatives will hate to admit it, the Federal debt went from 5 to 3.5 trillion under Slick Willie's stewardship. Is cutting all Americans taxes the wisest thing we can do?

   If we plan on tinkering with the tax code, lets cut the rates for lower incomes & offset it by raising it on those more affluent. Why should people making less than 15K annually have to pay 10-20% of their income while those who have never worked a day of their life are only taxed ~33% on the dividends from their stock portfolios?

    10K/yr =1%, 50K/yr =10%, 100K/yr=25%, 1M/yr=85%

   That will make some billionaires extremely angry.  Even though they've made hand over fist over the last two decades they are not at all interested in paying of any debts.

   But if America enacts a truly progressive income, I would then favor abolishing the capital gains tax. Without creating a progressive income tax, however, eliminating the capital gains & estate tax is unjustly favorable to the wealthiest 5% of the nation. With a progressive income tax, eliminating the capital gains & "death" tax only seems logical. I also propose that with inherited estates, the sum may be divided over a ten-year period, and then simply be considered income.

   For example, say you inherit a farm or business from your parents. The net worth is one million dollars. Instead of being taxed 90% on the lump sum, you can divide its value over a ten-year period, paying a far smaller %. In this way, truly huge estates would not escape paying back some of what they have received from this country, and yet smaller estates would escape far more intact.

    I would also favor cutting the taxes corporations have to pay IF a progressive income tax is created. Especially on small businesses with profits less than $100,000 annually. In truth, with smaller businesses there should be no taxes at all. It is my wish we stop taxing small businesses & encourage entrepreneurs to go into business for themselves, knowing full well, their first profits are all their own. The owners can choose whether they wish to reinvest these profits back into their business or create a larger personal income.

   On Social Security the Republicans wish to allow individuals to invest their own funds; but what happens if your investments are wiped out? Social security and welfare are a safety net which should not be tampered with lightly. If anything, those people with a [million] or more in net assets should not be receiving social security checks.

   During the Depression, people didn't have money to spend and therefore a recovery was non-existent. With welfare and Social Security, we guarantee people will have money to spend in the event of bad times, and the economy is far less likely to bottom out. What happens if the investments you have chosen suddenly evaporate? It is nice to think of the greater returns we might receive by risking our social security funds, but there is after all a downside to all of this.

"The name of the game with retirement planning is not to get rich," "Instead, the goal is not to be poor." Yet poverty is a real possibility for retirees. To understand just how tricky this stuff can be, suppose you retired at year-end 1969, lived until 1999 and held a portfolio that included 60% stocks, 30% bonds and 10% Treasury bills. Over 30 years, that mix generated a generous 12.3% average annual return, while inflation ran at 5.2% a year. But even if you knew your average returns were going to be that good, you could still have gone badly wrong. There's a hitch. While returns over the 30 years were good, the early results were dreadful, especially during the 1973-4 stock market crash. Because of those rotten early results and the accompanying inflation, you would have rapidly depleted your portfolio if you had used a 6.5% withdrawal rate and run out of money after just 15 years. Indeed for your portfolio to support you through the 30-year stretch, you had to limit your withdrawal rate to just 4.7%"People say they can do better with annuity But they're just focusing on long run average rates of return and not thinking about what can go wrong." Moreover ."Some people will get significantly below-average results." You have enormous uncertainty. "There's a case to be made for some sort of guaranteed income." As you weigh these risks, the notion of monthly check for rest of your life seems pretty appealing. [Getting Going, the Wall Street Journal, August 22, 2000, pg. C1 Jonathan Clements]

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   I believe we should promote holistic medicine as opposed to the modern western "health care industry" which has grown out of control.

We are suffering from the sickness business, which is composed of hospitals, doctors, and insurance companies. They treat the human being as a consumer and call it the "health care business." But it is the sickness care business, and they don't want to change it because over 800B a year is spent in this business by Americans. [Holistic] medicine can help people take charge of their own lives. Most physicians agree that 50 to 80 percent of all human disabilities are psychosomatic. Mind-generated. If that's true, why are they treating these diseases with drugs? Drugs are really dangerous. One doctor outlined 22 destructive side effects of three drugs used for hypertension. But hypertension is not a disease. It is just a bad habit in the autonomic nervous system. Through biofeedback training, people can learn to control the vascular system so they don't have hypertension. We demonstrated that. But who's paying attention? Not the insurance companies, not the medical organizations some doctors are- and not the hospitals. Why? You have to have a big cash flow if you are going to make money. And to have a big cash flow you make sure that people dont get the idea that they can take charge of at least half their problems. That would reduce the annual cash flow from 800B to, maybe, 400B. [Venture Inward, Sept/Oct, 1993, Presidents Message, Charles Thomas Cayce]

   I do not believe we need to infringe upon our Second Amendment rights anymore than we already have, especially after seeing what has happened in Britain & Australia recently with their own laws involving gun control. It seems criminals will always find a way to buy a gun. The one-week waiting period and ban on automatic weapons are more than enough & Thomas Jefferson himself said, "The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep & bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."

   I believe we should subsidize prophylactics & other forms contraception throughout the world. [See Scientific American, The Unmet Need for Family Planning, Jan., 2000]

   "I ... "  [felt the bullet press against my tempel before I heard the gunshot] ..............

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