Santa Claus, once a strong contender for the Republican presidential ticket, has seen his Iowa poll numbers fall in recent days after rumors surfaced of a bribery scandal. The complaint, raised by potential voters across the state and across party lines, is that Santa attempted to influence voter intent by delivering toys to the children of Iowa. A spokesman for the Claus campaign called the charges “baseless and naughty.” Nonetheless, children all over this rural state have been seen jumping and playing with toys still bearing a “From Santa” tag.

Mr. Claus had been running neck-in-neck with Mitt Romney in a poll of Iowa residents just two weeks ago, but that support has quickly slipped to below ten percent. The fall-off in popularity shadows similar trends by other candidates such as Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich in what has turned out to be a GOP Anyone-But-Romney-But-Come-On-Isn’t-There-A-Viable-Republican-Anywhere political season.

John Tate, Ron Paul’s campaign manager, lashed out at the overweight yet jovial candidate, accusing him of “singlehandedly destroying the American way of life with his foreign-made toys and his ability to slip through our nation’s porous borders undetected time and time again.” He also repeated the mantra, heard frequently on his campaign commercials, that Mr. Claus’s red suit is “an obvious signal of his leftist beliefs.” Fellow candidate Michele Bachmann was unusually silent, stating only that she loved the new Barbie® Malibu Dreamhouse set she received on Christmas morning.

The allegations of vote buying aren’t the only issue plaguing Santa. In the most recent Republican debate, several candidates chided him for his offshore factories that skirt American labor rules and taxation. His campaign also struggled after his staffers mistakenly registered him on several state ballots as “Kris Kringle,” raising voter confusion. And just three days ago, the group online watchdog group Is Santa For Real? released a scan of a birth certificate from Turkey for “Nicholas of Myra” that it claims proves Santa’s ineligibility for the office of President. That scandal passed quickly when it was shown that the birth year listed on the document was 270AD, indicating a possible fake.

Despite these setbacks, the self-proclaimed “December Surprise” was upbeat. “You better watch out; I’m coming to town, Washing-town!” said St. Nick at a campaign stop in Des Moines early this morning. “Other candidates promise; I deliver!”

[Image Credits: Microsoft Office clip art]

In Oliver Stone’s 1987 movie Wall Street, corporate profiteer Gordon Gekko summed up the financial state of America, its businesses, and its citizens: “It’s a zero sum game, somebody wins, somebody loses. Money itself isn’t lost or made, it’s simply transferred from one perception to another.” It’s a sentiment embodied in the Occupy Wall Street protests: the rich have all the money. But is it true? Is the economy a zero-sum game, a financial pie from which only limited slices of money are available for the country’s 300-million-plus people?

Consider the fictional country of Gekkoland, an island nation inhabited by 100 people, each with ten one-dollar bills. The total money resources of this community are just $1,000, and as the members of the community engage in business, they shuffle the bills around. It’s wouldn’t be surprising to find some people with much more than their initial $10, while others struggle to keep just one of those bills.

Such an island economy gives a partial glimpse into why the Occupy protestors are so upset. But it is also a wholly inaccurate view of how an economy works. In a real economy, money is not limited to the individual pieces of legal tender passed between buyers and sellers. Instead, economic activity causes the net worth of a community or nation to grow beyond its limited paper money resources. Dollar bills have value, but the goods and services produced by individuals and businesses also have value, as do those natural resources that go into those produced goods and services. All of these activities and investments contribute value to the community, increasing the initial pile of money. Paper currency is simply a convenient means of transferring a portion of the total community value.

Let’s look at some actual numbers for America’s economy. In 1945, the total net worth of all American households and non-profit organizations was $664.2 billion.[1] By 2010, that value had increased to $57,778.5 billion.[2] That’s an increase of more than $57 trillion. Even if you consider the meager funds that foreign immigrants bring to the United States, it’s not possible for cash alone to suddenly increase eighty-seven times over in sixty-five years. Instead, this growth occurs through economic activity, a positive-sum game.

There’s no denying that a significant part of that $58 trillion is held by the richest one percent. But that was also true in 1945, and somehow the rest of the (constantly increasing) population was able to increase their own net worth despite the amassed resources of the wealthy.

I am all for grass-roots protests in America, and some of the issues brought up by the protestors that relate to government bailouts of Wall Street firms strike a chord in my own heart. But if the tent-dwelling “ninety-nine percent” want to be taken seriously, it’s time they start educating themselves about what wealth distribution in the United States really means for the one hundred percent.

[Image Credits: Microsoft Office clip art]

[1] Federal Reserve Bank, Flow of Funds Accounts of the United States, 1945-1954, Table B.100, “Balance Sheet of Households and Nonprofit Organizations,” Net Worth for 1945, page 97, http://www.federalreserve.gov/RELEASES/z1/Current/annuals/a1945-1954.pdf.
[2] Federal Reserve Bank, Flow of Funds Accounts of the United States, 2005-2010, Table B.100, “Balance Sheet of Households and Nonprofit Organizations,” Net Worth for 2010, page 97, http://www.federalreserve.gov/RELEASES/z1/Current/annuals/a2005-2010.pdf.

If you are going to apologize, you might as well make it for something big. Take the mea culpa of radio prophet Harold Camping a few weeks ago. After incorrectly predicting the end of the world, Camping publicly backed away from his earlier statements of mankind’s demise. His recantation is understandable; the world not coming to an end on October 21 was pretty easy to spot. But this was not the first time he threw out an errant doomsday forecast. Since the late 1980s, Camping has made four distinct world-ending proclamations, none of which, it appears, came to pass.

It’s easy to find reasons why someone would make grandiose claims like this. Whether from false motives or true, people sometimes throw out predictions that they can’t possibly back up. Yet even when their failures are documented on the front page of The New York Times, people still respond with excitement to revised predictions from those same false prophets. When a small-time preacher with a handful of followers engages in such behavior, the fallout is limited. But when politicians engage in this same misleading behavior, the results can be costly.

A good example of this is the high-speed rail project currently under development in California. When voters went to the polls in 2008 to raise funding for the project, the official estimate was set at $42.6 billion (using year-of-expenditure calculations) for a San Francisco to Anaheim run^[1]. The day after Harold Camping confessed his own mistaken estimates, California issued revised numbers that increased the estimate for that same length of track to $81.1 billion^[2], nearly doubling the project cost in just three years.

There was no hint of remorse in the new projections, nor any sense of irony given that one goal of the project was to “alleviate the need to build—at a cost of nearly $100 billion—about 3,000 miles of new freeway, plus five airport runways, and 90 departure gates over the next two decades” (emphasis added).^[3] Even beyond the monetary inaccuracies, the idea that five new runways would be needed to manage a single intrastate transportation leg is laughable—and an outright lie.

Politicians and government bureaucracies that throw out expert estimates, only to double or triple them soon after, are just as misleading as those misguided prophets who publicize wrong dates for the end of the world. From Medicare to Social Security, from local road construction projects to national military expenditures, legislators are adept at issuing fiscal estimates that do not come anywhere near the eventual outlays of funds. Yet while we deride those who buy in to catastrophic Mayan calendar assessments, we continue to fall for one failed prophecy after another from elected officials.

Americans are a forgiving people, but we still have standards for our prophets. When they err, we are ready to offer pardon, but only after hearing a heartfelt apology. It’s time that we demand such contrition from our own politicians. And an apology better come soon, for I hear that after 2012 it might not matter.

[Image credits: Global warming image copyright (c) 2008 by BSK (sxc.hu/speculator)]

[1] California High-Speed Rail Authority, “Fact Sheet for the December 2009 Business Plan Report to the Legislature,” issued December 14, 2009, http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/assets/0/152/198/d7539774-c983-4a33-a2d1-f9cc001c143e.pdf
[2] California High-Speed Rail Authority, “2012 Draft Business Plan Fact Sheet,” issued November 1, 2011, http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/assets/0/152/302/6e05bd66-4317-46df-9891-4aea706fae01.pdf
[3] California High-Speed Rail Authority, “2008 Business Plan Summary,” issued November 7, 2008, http://www.cahighspeedrail.ca.gov/assets/0/152/198/1ea0c562-c16e-4a09-a159-dbfccb54268f.pdf

With the economy in shambles and the fall TV season lineup not looking much better, I’ve started to ask myself, “Where has all my money gone?” The various Occupy protestors around the nation wave a shameful finger at corporate CEOs and other one-percentish types, insisting that their high incomes mean more poverty for the common man. But is that true? Is the average person poorer now than in the past?

To find out the truth, I went to a source of honesty and upstanding values: the US government. Well, it might have issues, but it does produce a mountain of statistics, and the US Census Bureau is no exception. Here’s what I found. Between 1967 and 2010, the average (mean) household income in the United States rose from $45,599 to $67,530, all in 2010 inflation-adjusted dollars^[1]. That’s a 48 percent increase in raw financial largess.

That number isn’t simply being pulled up by the super-rich. The median income over the same time period rose from $40,770 to $49,445. That means that if you lined up all of the households in America, being careful not to let any fall into the oceans at the ends, the house right in the middle of the line had 21 percent more buying power. That’s not true just for that Median Joe family, but all the families nearby. Plus, those households have fewer people in them now (from 3.26 persons^[2] down to 2.58 persons^[3] per household), giving each man, woman, and child in the country an even more substantial increase in the last 43 years.

These numbers are all statistics, and there will always be anecdotal instances of specific households falling through the societal safety net. And there are blocks of households that sway the results slightly; the large Baby Boomer demographic tends to have more money than the smaller yet vocal twentysomething class. But by and large, the majority of households in America are richer than they were in the Johnson era. So why doesn’t it feel that way to so many, especially to those who make noise about being in the 99 Percent?

It’s the iPhone’s fault. Memory is short, especially for the younger generation that doesn’t remember what the typical American life was like before Google. Back in the day, families spent less money. They went out to eat less, bought ordinary 10-speeds for their kids instead of flashy fixie bikes, and communicated by licking a 13-cent postage stamp instead of paying $150 or more per month for a family voice and data plan. Life didn’t cost as much back then, not because CEOs weren’t sucking our wallets dry, but because the typical lifestyle involved lower-cost essentials.

With healthcare costs and mortgages skyrocketing, it is certainly true that families spend more on the necessities of life. But with designer stainless steel appliances in the kitchen and a Cheesecake Factory on every corner and a 3G-connected Android device always at the ready, what constitutes a “necessity” has changed. Yes, the CEOs are richer than ever before, but that’s only because we are, too.

^[1] US Census Bureau, Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2010, released September 2011, http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/p60-239.pdf
^[2] US Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States, Table HS-12, “Households by Type and Size 1900 to 2002,” http://www.census.gov/statab/hist/HS-12.pdf
^[3] US Census Bureau, May 26, 2011 press release, http://www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/archives/2010_census/cb11-cn144.html

[Image credits: Microsoft Office clip art]

We are now well into the seventh week of the Occupy Portions of Wall Street protests, and perhaps it is time to start asking: Why are they doing it? Oh sure, there is the rhetoric about how the rich Wall Street fat cats exploit the middle class and the poor. But where are the details? Certainly the rich have the ability to exploit the poor. Even the Bible, in the book of James, warns about becoming too cozy with the rich and their manipulative ways. But it’s not enough to just say “they exploit.” If you want to accomplish anything, you need to be specific.

When a wealthy CEO buys, for instance, a yacht, does that exploit the lesser classes? Not really. The purchase of a boat generates jobs for those who manufacture and maintain said boat. Governments receive new revenues in the form of sales taxes and boat-company employee income taxes. And every minute a CEO spends on a boat is one minute away from exploiting others for profit. So purchasing a yacht is not an oppressive action. It’s no different from the middle-class purchase of a Toyota Camry; no lower-class citizens were harmed in the purchase of that car.

Are CEO salaries a form of exploitation? If the average CEO is indeed making more than 400 times as much as a corporate employee—as the occupiers assert—that is certainly shocking news. But is that the exploitation we should worry about? I haven’t followed up on that claim of disparity, but assuming it is true: even if the CEOs of all Fortune 500 companies gave up most of their incomes to be used as salaries for others, that would only fund jobs for about 100,000 to 150,000 workers. In an age of nine-percent-plus American unemployment, that’s an almost meaningless number. And besides, America’s economy is not a zero-sum game. Economies grow, and a rich person’s income is not what prevents the middle and lower classes from obtaining jobs.

So where is the exploitation? If the problem is not with CEO incomes, and it’s not in their spending habits, where is the oppression? Is it in how they engage in business practices that undermine their competitors? Perhaps. There are anti-monopoly laws that watch for illegal behavior. But most aggressions against other companies come in the form of undercutting prices, an action that is a win for the average consumer. So that’s not the core exploitative issue.

What about the rich’s ability to use money to influence government action for personal and business gain? Is this a form of exploitation? Yes, this is an oppressive act, and a form of manipulation among those in a position to hinder the lives of ordinary citizens. Every dollar that the government gives to a bankrupt solar power company, or to a failing bank, or to a food processing conglomerate is one dollar that was taken from a typical taxpayer, a dollar that that taxpayer could have used for rent, food, clothing, or in purchasing a product from those same companies.

Rich companies and their leaders take advantage of government subsidies and grants for their own benefit, and for this they deserve condemnation. But the core problem is in the weak-willed elected officials who wave to voters with one hand while passing billions of dollars to their greedy corporate friends with the other. Protestors gripe about a CEO’s easy access to legislators. But if that congressman stands firm in the wake of lobbying efforts, where is the harm? The problem starts when someone you put into office says, “Sure Mr. Wall Street, whatever you want.”

If Occupy Wall Street wants to have a positive impact on the ninety-nine percent, it’s time they stop milling around business centers, and start holding the true exploiters accountable, in the voting booth.

[Image Credits: Microsoft Office clip art].

Businesses provide goods or services in exchange for money. When you buy groceries at the store, you pay. When you get your haircut at a salon, you pay. It works the same way for banks; when you open an account, you pay. But banks discovered that if they could collect your payment through interest or by charging the merchants fees every time you use your debit card, you would be happier. You still pay for the checking account, but you do it indirectly through reduced interest rates or increased prices from merchants. It’s all hidden from you; “free checking” is bankspeak for “hidden-fees checking,” and Americans love hidden fees.

And they hate direct charges. That’s why things got complicated when Bank of America recently announced a new customer fee for debit card transactions. The fee stems from the “Durbin amendment,” a portion of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 added by Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) just before passage. Previously, banks could charge merchants up to 44 cents for each debit card transaction. The updated rules limit banks with over $10 billion in assets to a charge of just 24 cents per transaction. $10 billion? 44 cents? 24 cents? Don’t ask where the numbers come from. The point is that Bank of America, which had been using those fees to offset the costs of free customer services, needed to obtain the money elsewhere. The solution? Charge the customer directly.

It was an idea that bordered on treason. “What Bank of America has done is an outrage,” said Senator Durbin in response to the bank’s new $5 per month fee. Of course it’s an outrage; it’s a direct payment. Didn’t banks learn back in the days of free toasters that they couldn’t charge customers for their goods and services?

Durbin has it right. In fact, he needs to issue a few more amendments that eliminate the ridiculous up-front fees charged by restaurants, gas stations, office supply stores, and—please, please, please—Amazon.com. The government is already an expert at hiding its own charges. Payroll withholding is a genius idea that keeps people ignorant and happy. If you never see the money coming out of your paycheck, why should you care where it goes? And half of the taxes you pay for Social Security and Medicare are actually paid on your behalf by your employer. Of course, your salary is reduced by the same amount, but who cares? It’s hidden!

Still, there are so many things that Americans pay for up front. It’s high time that we stopped paying attention and started paying more hidden fees. The Obama administration has done a good job at getting the ball rolling. Following Bush’s lead in the banking bailout, Obama invested in the automobile industry, and investment means hidden fees. Yes! And now with exciting new programs such as Obamacare, federal funding of failing green energy startups, and nearly unlimited extensions for unemployment and student loan payments, the end of out-of-pocket spending may finally be in sight. Of course, it will require nearly 100 percent taxation rates, but what were you going to spend that money on anyway? Bank fees?

[Image Credits: Credit card copyright (c) 2010 by James Miller (sxc.hu/highwing)].

Cell phones are an amazing technology. One small handheld device has the ability, from nearly anywhere in the world and across unthinkable distances, to cut you off in mid-conversation. For reasons like this, plus issues of national security, I’ve avoided getting a cell phone. So I was more than a little apprehensive when my preteen son wanted his own phone. You yourself might be having this same anxiety, and he’s not even your kid!

My son had been asking me for a cell phone for quite some time, at least since the eighteenth century, providing many convincing proofs as to its usefulness, including facts such as, “Everyone has a phone but me,” and “I guess you don’t really love me anymore.” Still, this was a big decision, and instead of simply acquiescing to his childish demands, I needed to spend some time researching cell phones and calling plans. Then I could acquiesce to his childish demands like a good parent should.

My research began with a thorough examination of the cell phone system, in that I took an educated guess of how it all works. Cell phones transmit the human voice through a “cellular network,” a distributed system of eighty-foot-tall radio towers that evolved over billions of years from simpler single-celled towers. These cells are placed strategically throughout the world, often disguised to blend in with the surrounding scenery; you probably even have one in your kitchen, near the Cuisinart.

During a call, a cell phone converts the caller’s voice into millions of digital bits which are passed to the nearest cell, where all but the choicest and tastiest bits are discarded. The remaining ten percent or so are sent to “the network,” a CBS TV station in central Nebraska. The call is then linked to the callee; the network connects to the target cell tower, the cell tower connects to the cell phone, the cell phone connects to the ear-bone.

All cell phone providers use this type of system. Regardless of which vendor is used, each call gets routed to the destination network in seamless and billable ways. So the selection of a cell phone company boils down to two simple considerations: (1) which provider offers the best coverage and features for the most reasonable cost based on a customer’s calling habits and financial situation, and (2) which provider’s contract promises the quickest return of a customer’s first-born.

Selecting a phone is a little more involved. There are dozens of phones on the market, and the selection changes three times per day. Especially popular are so-called “smart phones,” which include advanced features for managing a schedule, browsing the Internet, taking pictures, hacking into top-secret military installations, uploading videos to YouTube, and so on. Even the standard “stupid phones” include easy-to-use features that—and mind you, this is all without you needing to configure anything complicated—allow the phone to receive calls from unidentified numbers at 2:00 a.m.

In addition to selecting a phone, there is also the issue of “texting,” the ability to send short type-written messages to other phones that bear no resemblance to the English language (the messages, not the phones). All kids, including Baptists, text things to their friends all the time. It can be a little unnerving when you see a bunch of youngsters tapping mindlessly on their phones, especially when there are better ways for them to spend their days, such as tapping mindlessly on their portable game systems.

Households interested in using more than one phone should consider a “family plan,” so named because Vinnie, a member of the provider’s family, visits periodically to make sure the monthly payments are up to date. These plans also include a set number of monthly calling minutes that all phones on the contract share. Additional minutes are charged directly to the customer’s second mortgage.

In the end, I decided to get phones for the whole family. My son’s new phone includes a touchscreen, a flip-out keyboard, hundreds of family calling minutes, unlimited texting, and a can opener. It was a little pricey, but the costs are clearly outweighed by the sense of safety. As a loving parent, I can now take comfort in knowing that, in an emergency, my precious offspring will be able to text his friends about it.

[Image Credits: Pocketknife image with logo copyright (c) 2009 by Simon A. Eugster via WikiMedia Commons; cell phone from official Nokia 6275 promotional image.]

Christmas is a season of peace and joy, a chance to reflect back on the time long ago when Mary and Joseph made the difficult journey to Bethlehem, only to stay overnight in a stable because the innkeeper had burned down the hotel with too many holiday lights. Luckily, decorating your tree and home today involves much less bodily peril and only half the number of donkeys. To enjoy a safe and sane Christmas, use the following “Lighting Checklist” to help prepare your house for winter lighting conditions.

Purchase Your Lights. Before you make the long trip to your local major retail store to stock up on lights, figure out how many lights you need. For the outside of your house, many homeowners purchase strings of lights that look like icicles when lit up at night, and like broken fishing tackle during the day. These lights typically come packaged in twenty-foot long sections. Estimate one section of lights for every two feet of roof border, since manufacturers are required by federal law to keep these lights from being untangled by the consumer. For the Christmas tree in your house, always buy two strands of lights since nobody has the patience to go around the tree more then seven or eight times.

In every neighborhood there is always one house that pushes lighting to the extreme, covering the property with approximately the same number of lights used in New York’s Times Square, only brighter. You must resist all attempts to compete with such neighbors. Instead, visit these local Christmas elves and commend them on the fine job they are doing. Better yet, invite them over for some early Christmas cheer and eggnog. This will give your kids time to collect a few hundred feet of lights from their house, since the store will only have three half-open boxes of lights left in stock.

Test the lights. Many homeowners make the mistake of nailing up long cords of Christmas lights, only to discover that some or all of the lights in each strand fail to turn on. That’s why it is important to test your Christmas lights before putting them up. To properly test them, lay one strand out to its full length and plug the lights in. If any of the glass elements stay dark, move to each errant bulb and—taking care not to damage the delicate wires at the base of each tiny unit—strike it with a blunt hammer. Then return the entire section to the store for a replacement set, indicating how the first string was defective. Repeat this process until you find a set that lights up completely.

Install the lights. Attaching the Christmas lights to your house is the most dangerous part of the decorating procedure. You should adequately prepare for the task, being sure the take plenty of time to plan each step in the process. Five or six weeks should be enough. But if you have one of those nagging wives who drones on and on about how the kids would be heartbroken without lights, and if you have verified that they really are your kids, then it’s time to pull out the ladder and put up the lights.

You should not attempt the installation by yourself. Many people are severely injured every year while placing lights on their house, even when Al Gore is out of the country. To ensure your safety, call over some friends to help with the task. One person should hold the ladder steady, another person should carefully unravel each stand and be ready to feed the lights, and a third person should attach the lights to the inside of the eaves. To maintain the spirit of the season, be sure to ask these three people if they would like you to pick up something to snack on from the store, since you’re going out anyway.

All that’s left to do is to throw the switch and admire your handiwork. And after you’ve had a chance to stand back and admire the warm glow, you can take comfort in knowing that there should be a few additional spaces available in the stable.

[Image Credits: unknown]

Southern California is a great place to live. No matter how difficult the work week is, there’s always a sunny weekend ahead: a chance to get in your car, drive to the some scenic mountain or ocean recreation spot, and feel your skin warmed by the collective friction of millions of tiny ant feet.

At least that’s been my experience, because ants are everywhere in California. You can’t get away from them, even at home. For example, when you open the front door to your house and look down, you immediately see hundreds of ants crawling all over your homeless immigrant. And if you leave even the tiniest bit of food on the kitchen counter, the ants will find it within minutes and will, by working together as a cohesive team over the course of several hours, produce a new episode for Food Network.

I found this out first hand over the summer when a local gang of black ants moved into my house. These ants are tenacious, maybe even twelvacious, and refuse to leave. It’s possible that they are related to the creatures discussed in the classic 1954 documentary Them!, a film about giant mutated ants that, after escaping from the Nevada nuclear test range, move to New York to attend a special high school for gifted dance students looking to make it big on Broadway. Or perhaps that was Fame. It’s hard to tell the movies apart with all those moving legs.

I tried several different ant killers, including sprays, powders, and “ant traps,” which are more like “ant Sizzler salad bars” from the way the ants kept returning for more. The local home center offered a product that promised to make ants as scarce as that store’s employees, which seemed numerically impossible. I even bought one pesticide that was supposed to kill the ants and leave behind “the refreshing scent of oranges.” Ants love oranges.

Of course, the treatments did kill a few thousand ants. But the typical colony is made up of millions of ants, each working for the benefit of the nest and its queen: building homes, collecting food, responding to calls from angry cable TV customers. They accomplish all this and more because, despite having brains no larger than that of the typical Nobel Peace Prize committee member, they are highly social creatures. Ants communicate by means of chemical signals called “pheromones,” a term derived from the Greek words “pherein,” meaning “to transport,” and “horomone,” meaning “across a 3G wireless network for one low monthly fee.” This signal system is tremendously complex, and allows groups of ants to work on projects like a team.

My point is that killing ants doesn’t seem to be working. Instead, I’ve come up with another method: introduce presidential campaigns to the ant world. By breaking ants up into distinct political parties—including Democr-ants and Insect-pendants—and removing all restrictions on campaign contributions, those ants will be arguing social policy and voting for whichever ant has the best antennae presence in no time. In a colony where every drone and worker will dream of growing up to be the first black ant president, they won’t have time to worry about wrecking my home.

In that great and glorious day, I will finally be able to say “good riddance” to this plague of ants, and rejoice in never needing to see them in my house again. Unless they know of some way to get rid of this orange smell.

[Image Credits: unknown]

Over 200 years ago—or 634 years when adjusted for inflation—our founding fathers established a nation based on the principles of individual liberty, guaranteed God-given rights, and the elimination of government tyranny. They called this new country “The United States of America.” Unfortunately, that country was captured by the Swiss during World War I, requiring President Woodrow Wilson to improvise a new country on the fly.

Despite this change, today’s America bears a striking resemblance to the system founded by Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin, with just three minor modifications: (1) it has a few more states, including newcomers Alaska, Hawaii, and North Mexico, (2) the Chicago Cubs are not permitted to play in the World Series, and (3) in matters of social and fiscal policy, politicians are given decision-making powers at a level normally reserved for the Greek pantheon. While the first two changes are praised by Americans of all faiths and body mass indexes, many citizens take issue with the increase in government intrusion in their lives. And with the elimination of the death penalty in some states, elected officials are scrambling for ways to quell this uprising.

I became concerned about the unrestrained power of American politicians soon after the 2008 presidential election. In one of his first acts as president, Barack Obama moved his small family into a plush 55,000-square-foot house on Pennsylvania Avenue, in one of the most well-known sections of Washington, DC. That house is huge! It’s this type of political largess and corruption that has citizens up in arms over the role and size of government.

The problem is not with the politicians per se; their per se‘s tend to be on the small side. The problem is with the lack of restraint and the ease with which political power can be abused. Fortunately, there are things that we, as citizens and illegal aliens, can do about it. To start the ball rolling, I propose the following changes to our system of government.

1. All elected officials must pay double the tax rate of the general public, an increase of nearly thirty times what their lobbyists currently pay for them.
2. The existing ten-year term limit on the office of president will now extend cumulatively to all elected and appointed officials. Every governmental leader, from city councilmember to Supreme Court justice, can serve up to ten years before being required to find a private-sector job. Exceptions are made for United States senators, who must work one year as an official Washington, DC tour guide for each year served in the senate.
3. When not actively working in the capital, all members of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches must work at a customer service counter for their state’s Department of Motor Vehicles.
4. Before being allowed to vote on a piece of legislation, elected officials must copy out in longhand every word of the bill. Lobbyists who wish to influence votes in Congress must spend 200 hours each year grading these papers with red pens.
5. A copy of each legislator’s personal credit card statement must be mailed each month to the voters in that official’s district.
6. No public item—including bridges, government buildings, sandwiches at the congressional cafeteria—may be named after any elected official, a ban which remains in effect until the person’s death. After that time, members of the opposition party may name five public items after the late politician.
7. All political leaders and appointees, including the ambassador to the United Nations, must wear uniforms with cheery colors and a happy-smile badge.
8. Municipal leaders must commute by car to work daily at least thirty miles in each direction, and at the height of rush hour, even if this means riding around in circles for a while. One member of the city’s traffic engineering department must ride shotgun.
9. Elections for all federal offices, including cabinet appointments, will be replaced with a nationally-televised Dancing with the Politicians show, hosted by Tom Bergeron and Jim “Sweet Puppy Dog Eyes” Lehrer.
10. The annual budget of any government agency or department may be increased each year by using a complex formula that considers the previous year’s budget, the rate of inflation, the population growth of the relevant district or jurisdiction, and the percentage of citizens who voted in the last election. This number is then multiplied by zero.

By implementing these simple changes, it would take no more than a decade to return this country to its rightful place as the undisputed leader of the free world, assuming that the Swiss are content with their last acquisition.

[Image Credits: US Capital image copyright (c) 2005 by Ben Shafer (sxc.hu/bshafer); Drill image copyright (c) 2007 by Peter Huys (sxc.hu/DarkSide)]