Making America What Again?

Scott Benowitz lays down all the issues that will likely continue to receive impressively little attention from our Federal government as well as from the mainstream media in the U.S.

Sometime back in the 1960’s, years before I was born, campaign advisors to Presidential candidates realized that it is far easier to run a Presidential campaign if the candidates concentrate mostly on 5 or 6 issues in their speeches and in their advertisements than if they focus their campaigns on 20 or 30 issues.

Presidential candidates and their campaign staff thoroughly understand that there are some issues that are so controversial that they may likely end up losing more potential votes than they would gain if they even mention those issues, let alone take a firm definitive position in which they state clearly that they are either in favor of or opposed to some issues.

Other issues are ignored by the candidates from the two major parties simply because they view those issues as being trivial, or effecting only a small percentage of our population.  And there are other issues which the candidates from the two major parties almost never mention not because these issues are potentially controversial at all, but because they simply don’t want to include too many issues in their campaigns; many of the people who work as campaign advisors to the candidates from the 2 major parties today will advise the candidates to keep their campaigns simplified.

So.  November 9^th, 2016.  What does this mean for the issues that I’ve been paying attention to?

I make no claims to have any clairvoyant powers, but from what I envision for January 2017 through January 2021, the Trump/ Pence administration will likely continue to ignore a lot of the issues that I’ve been writing about since we first posted The Pavlovic Today’s website back in April of 2016.

This means that for the rest of this decade, the following issues will likely continue to receive impressively little attention from our Federal government as well as from the mainstream media in the U.S.:

• First Ammendment issues regarding the Constitutionality of our national motto, removing the phrase “In God We Trust” from our currency, getting “In God We Trust” out of our courts, removing the swearing in on Bibles in juries, removing the phrase “So Help You God” from graduation ceremonies in public schools and from the oaths that many civil servants, soldiers in our military and our military academies are required to state, removing the references to “God” and removing prayers from military training and from our military academies and the possibility of removing the religious figures from the friezes above the main entrances to the United States Supreme Court Building
• Proposals that would require that all prisoners in Federal and state prisons who are U.S. citizens, including those who have been convicted of serious felonies be permitted to vote in the primary elections, the general elections and special elections/ bi-elections while they are serving their prison sentences
• Federal legislation which would require that all of our states pay compensations to people who have served prison sentences and have later been determined to have been wrongfully convicted for the months, years or decades of their lives that they lost while they were in prison
• Replacing the “natural born citizen” requirement for future Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates with the requirement that they’ve been naturalized citizens for either 20 or 25 years
• I wrote an article in our August 21^st, 2016 issue in which I propose that we eliminate the electoral college and establish a first- past- the- post electoral system for future Presidential elections. At the time that I am writing this article, our former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine did in fact win the popular vote yesterday, Nov. 8^th, 2016, and 2½ months from now in this upcoming January of 2017, we will be watching the inauguration of President Trump and Vice President Pence.
• I’ve written an article in which I propose that all of the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates from our third parties be invited to participate in the televised debates, and in one of our upcoming issues, I will be writing an article in which I discuss removing the obstacles to ballot access for the third party candidates.
• Requiring that all of the county boards of elections throughout the country compare their lists of current registered voters either with the Social Security Administration’s Death Master Index or with records from hospitals, coroners, morgues, funeral homes and crematoriums so that decease people will be automatically removed from active voter registrations
• Resolving the disputed coastal waterway borders between Maine/ New Brunswick, Washington/ British Columbia, Alaska/ British Columbia and Alaska/ Yukon Territory with the Canadian government
• Our Federal government signing party to the United Nations’ 1982 Law Of The Sea Treaty, The 1997 Land Mines Convention, and the 1998 Rome Statute Of The International Criminal Court
• $500 today purchases less than $100 did back in 1969 when the Nixon administration ended the use $500 and $1,000 bills. In our June 12^th, 2016 issue, I wrote an article in which I’d stated that while the reasons that the Nixon administration ended the use of higher value bills 47 years ago still make sense, I’d proposed that our Treasury work with our Bureau Of Engraving And Printing and we reintroduce higher value bills into circulation, simply due to factoring in for inflation.
• Allowing the Bureau Of Engraving And Printing to use portraits which depict images of people who are still alive on our coins, bills and treasury bonds and treasury bills
• Having our Federal government pressure the administrators at the World Bank to work with the governments of the 20 countries who are using the American dollar as one of their currencies because they lack their own stable national currency to either establish their own stable national currencies or to sign party to regional currencies, so that the United States will be the only country which uses our dollar as our national currency
• I also wrote a series of articles about blue laws back in July in which I pointed out that while most of the thousands of blue laws that have never been removed from the state and local legal codes throughout the U.S. are archaic and obsolete, most of them are not unconstitutional. A small handful of them however are blatantly obviously unconstitutional, in particular the laws from the 18^th and the 19^th centuries that have never been removed from the books which allow for killing of Native Americans (or “Indians.”)  Those laws have yet to be removed simply because people have forgotten that those laws even still exist, because they’ve not been enforced since the mid 19^th century.  In the article which appeared in our July 31^st issue, I proposed that our Federal government should force the states in which those laws have still not been purged form the legal codes to remove those laws.
• I’ve proposed that our Federal government force the Marines to remove the 5 words, “…to the shores of Tripoli” from the Marines’ Hymn because we’re trying to get the population of Libya to view the U.S. as an ally and not an enemy power for the first time since the 1960’s.
• I will be writing an article for The Pavlovic Today sometime in December in which I discuss that our Federal government should consider closing most of our military bases that are located in other countries.
• I’ve proposed that our Federal government install photovoltaic panels and mini wind turbines on the rooftops of all Federally owned buildings. I’ve also proposed that our Federal government consider converting most of our Federally owned vehicles to operate on biodiesel or ethanol (or a combination of both.)  The Federal government also has the option to convert the back-up generators that supply electricity to Federally owned buildings when there are power outages to operate on biodiesel fuel.
• I’ve proposed that Federal agencies such as the Department of Energy, the EPA and the Department Of The Interior work with state governments so that facilities which recycle municipal wastewater into drinking water as well as desalination of seawater plants can be constructed, so that the U.S. will continue to have a plentiful and sustainable supply of clean water for both agriculture and household use throughout the 21^st, the 22^nd and the 23^rd centuries.
• I’ve proposed that Congress close out three (3) archaic and obsolete proposed Constitutional amendments which have officially been “pending” since the 20^th, the 19^th centuries, plus the one obsolete proposed amendment which has been officially “pending” since 1789.
• In our Oct. 16^th, 2016 issue, I wrote that I believe that our Federal government needs to allocated a lot more funding to NASA for future manned lunar missions as well as manned research missions to Mars.
• Congress requires that the Bureau Of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives still keep their records of receipts from gun sales on microfiche reels, they are not permitted to computerize their records. Does using 1940’s era technologies still make sense?  This is the only government agency in the U.S. (and probably the entire world) which is not permitted to computerize their own records.  And this is the agency that police departments throughout the country need to contact when they are investigating gun related crimes.
• The citizens of Cuba payed as much attention to our 2016 election as the citizens here did, most of them are hoping that the 1960 embargo be overturned and trade and travel can be resumed for the first time since 1959.
• In our most recent issue, I wrote an article in which I proposed that our Caribbean colonies of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands and our Pacific Island colonies, the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam and American Samoa be permitted to hold referendums regarding the possibilities of either independence or statehood because their present status as colonies makes no sense at all. In this same article I also mentioned that we need to resolve our issues regarding paying reparations to the citizens of The Republic Of The Marshall Islands who are still suffering from the effects of our atomic weapons tests that our military had conducted in the Pacific from the the 1940’s through the 1960’s- the current funding that our Federal government pays to them does not cover the costs of 2016 (or 2017) medical bills.  And in this same article, I mention that we need to resolve the disputed claims of a number of uninhabited Caribbean atolls in which the U.S. as well as a number of other countries have been making territorial claims to.
• We are the only country in the world whose national capital city is a “district,” so the residents of Washington, D.C. have no representation in the Senate, and they have one (1) non voting delegate in the House Of Representatives. Many residents of Washington, D.C. have been advocating for statehood status since as far back as the 1960’s.
• I’ll also be writing an article in one of our upcoming issues in which I propose that the Federal Highway Administration and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration require that all 50 of our states require that all drivers have auto insurance policies; this decision is still currently left up to the individual state governments and we still have two (2) states in which auto insurance is optional.

Hillary Clinton also rarely mentioned any of these issues

In fairness, I do believe that Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine would also likely have knowingly and intentionally ignored most of the issues that I’ve mentioned here too- simply because they very clearly knowingly and intentionally rarely mentioned any of these issues during their campaigns this year.

In 1996 as well as 2008, Hillary Clinton had stated very clearly that she was opposed to repealing the embargo with Cuba.  In 2014 as well as 2015, she’d stated that she is now in favor of repealing the ban, and in 2016, she’s mentioned almost nothing about the issue.  Throughout the course of her career in politics, she has changed her mind on numerous issues many times, so I don’t actually have any idea where she stands on this issue now.

The only issue which I’ve written about since Ksenija first set up The Pavlovic Today’s website back in this past April which the Trump/ Pence administration will probably pay a lot of attention to is domestic infrastructure improvements.

In our September 11^th, 2016 issue, I wrote an article in which I discuss various infrastructure improvement projects, including lighting most of our interstate highways and our state highways as well as constructing bridges to some of our coastal islands.  This is the only issue that I’ve written about which my views actually align closely with the Trump administrations’ views.  I also wrote an article which appeared in our May 15^th, 2016 issue in which I propose that the Federal Highway Administration and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration require that all automobiles and trucks in the U.S. display both front and rear license plates.

If Donald Trump is as serious about security issues as he says he is, it is possible that administrators within the Department of Homeland Security will notice that we’ve been making life particularly easy for criminals and terror suspects who are fleeing from law enforcement by still allowing vehicles in many states to display only rear license plates.

The most hopeful moment of the Nov. 8^th, 2016 election for me was when a spokesperson who works for former President George W. Bush announced that former President Bush II had finished voting; this spokesperson would not state who former President Bush II did vote for, but he stated that former President Bush II did not vote for either Trump/ Pence or for Clinton/ Kaine.  President Elect Trump had previously been active with the Reform Party 16 years ago, back in 2000.  Former President Bush II has now voted for one of the third party candidates, and our President Elect had once been active with one of the third parties, perhaps this is a sign that the mainstream media may begin to pay more attention to our other parties at some point within the next few years.

I would like to conclude here by reminding our readers that the mere fact that the domestic mainstream media is paying very little attention to an issue does not mean that the issue is trivial.  It merely means that for any number of reasons, the two major parties have chosen to place those issues low on their agenda.