Before I dive in, there’s some things I have to get out there. I’m currently gainfully employed, and do not plan on going anywhere, anytime soon. This is important to note in a “what if scenario” because if indeed I was running, that complicates things a lot with my employment. So – this is a hypothetical situation of “one day” where I’d put out there what I wanted to run on. And – how I’d get there and what I’d do when there.

Politicians

From the time I was in diapers, I wanted to do something like West Point then the military, then be in Congress in the House. For those of you not in the US reading this, we have a bicameral legislature where you have the House of Representatives and the Senate. The House is based off of state population, where the more people a state has, the more reps to the house you have. The Senate is 2 per state. This then may have states like California, New York, and Texas having a lot of influence in the House, but with the Senate, Texas has the same representation as tiny Delaware. This is meant to ensure big states do not trample smaller states.

But what did it for me was when I was about 12 or so, I had read about $30,000 hammers and was enraged our budgets were so high. Now, as an adult I more better understand what is behind the $30,000 hammer which I won’t speculate here on, but the idea was I felt that this type of thing was ludicrous, and wanted to be someone who put an end to it.

Overall, I felt politicians at the House should be made up of your populations. You have lawyers, sure – but cops, military, nurses, doctors – and then perhaps writers, farmers, contractors, accountants, etc. Many of these people back in the day felt this was a duty and a service to their country, and today it is a career destination for some. IF I were to do this, it would probably be for a max of 8 years in the House, and get out. Given what I have done in my career, I felt I could bring a lot of IT/cybersecurity experience to the House. What these fancy lawyers that get elected might do is then consult with IT people. Or accountants. Or contractors. But why aren’t THESE PEOPLE your reps?

The system is broken, and has been for some time.

Getting there

Each state has their own set of election laws. I decided to read an article the other day about how one might do this. Big picture, is they basically say it takes a lot of money. And….this is what is wrong with the system, period. How can you have a farmer come to the House if he has to come up with half a million to run? He can’t. Plus, he’d be working 12 hours a day. However, today there is a great equalizer with the internet, and someone like myself has a decent understanding of how one might be able to get to the House, for free.

You see, the article I read said you should not really consider it unless you can get $300,000 from your “network”. Well, IF I were to do this, it would be to prove everyone wrong. People I know aren’t sitting around with thousands of dollars to give to me to burn on campaign signs. So in theory, that should disqualify me right then and there. I mean, you have to pay a campaign manager, and perhaps a treasurer. But – I would not do that. And start your chuckles right there with how naive I am. But that’s the whole goddamn point.

I once saw an interview with a House Rep who was leaving – he said he and many others would spend half the day working the phones asking donors for money. They would get out of their office and go to an office across the street and there they would pander for thousands in donations. They would have fancy lunches and get access to donors. And – PACs then swoop in and give you money, with the expectation you would align yourself with their causes.

There’s a joke that anyone in Congress should wear race car jerseys which show who is sponsoring you. This would be me.

You see…if it costs you nothing to get there, you aren’t in the pocket of anyone. And, this also means you don’t spend half your day fund raising – but you actually spend it meeting with people and discussing their concerns and then working with writing bills to get shit done.

A man of the people

I curse. I grew up with little. I have tight friends. I borrowed money to go to college and grad school. I work a “9 to 5” like you. What many people do when they get to Congress is then fight for the people of their state to get them a bigger slice of the pie. New bridges. Roads. Jobs. But the only way you can get that is in the form of “pork”. Meaning, someone wants you to vote for a bill, then you say, “sure, if I can get the funding for this Youth Center”. Then, this goes around to everyone that signs the bill into law. When I think of these bills, I’m thinking of 1-2 pages of things that make sense, along with 400 pages of pork.

Enough.

My mission to go there would be to work at the federal level, AS the founders wanted us to. Given my background, I can see how the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986 made sense. Computers are interconnected on networks, and with this, cross state boundaries and with this – fall under interstate commerce. I get that. And these bills should be nearly unanimous in passing. They should not be a Republican bill or a Democrat Bill. I believe anything like this should come out of committee with bipartisan support and 1-2 pages long. Obviously, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is much larger – but what I mean is the TYPE of things being done at this level should…

  1. Be direct – zero pork.
  2. Be bipartisan – federal laws should be rather bland in respect to party

I feel most people coming to the House should fall in a 60-80% spectrum with all of their views. What do I mean?

To me, people who have voted for different parties over their lives may be the best ones to represent you. Why? They understand a wide spectrum of political understanding that most on the fringes.

The problems we have today in this country are threefold:

  1. Items that are state-level types of things are fought over at the highest federal levels – these have no universal solutions that the entire population can agree upon, and thus should go to the states.
  2. There are stupid amounts of money needed to get involved in politics and stay there, which then creates a situation where those who go to Washington must pander to these special interests to keep their jobs – this also then creates career politicians.
  3. The parties are only really backing those with the far left or far right ideologies, with the interest in power being the main objective.

What occurred to me was that if you understand the problems, you might then be better prepared to fight the system. From above, you see the problems – what are the solutions?

  1. Advocate to streamline our government at the top level to remove anything that should be done with at the state level. Additionally, shrink government by understanding what services we are supposed to do at the national level, understanding these business processes, and privatizing what can be done. With a FedEx and UPS, could these entities absorb US Postal Service type of work? I don’t know, but has the question even been asked? Are there monies going to USPS from the tax payers? I feel that I can be instrumental in reducing national government size – by a LOT. This can remove cost of government, and with it, reduce the cost base of these services.
  2. Introduce term limits in all areas of government. While the president is set at 2 terms (8 years), it makes sense to me to have 5 terms for the House (10 years), 2 terms for the Senate (12 years) and 15 years for the Supreme Court. The issue you have with things like the House are that you have had people there for 30 years that are all mighty and powerful. However, for “one term and done” you would lose a ton of knowledge and how things are done by having the entire House turn over every 2 years. So you may need the expertise of those who have been there for 6-8 years to run committees, but I don’t think this should be a career politician thing. I believe a Constitutional Amendment should be passed for all of this, and include how many Supreme Court Justices there are. We cannot “pack” courts and just continue to add if things do not go our way.
  3. I believe we need a ton of moderates to run now. And those from all backgrounds. And – I believe there should be decent funds available to those the party backs. If you have 20 people that want to run, who will the party then back? Perhaps the person who is far left or far right? Maybe the far leftist or far rightists are primaried, instead of the moderates getting primaried by the far fringes of their parties? WHAT IF – in the system I designed above, the more moderate candidates have a statistically better chance of winning general elections? Think about that one for a moment. IF you represent the middle 60%, then you have a better chance than the 50% of the left or 50% of the right that would vote for you.

How I would do it…

15 years ago or so I had an idea for a website I was going to do. We all had ideas. All of us – but this one was for political candidates and those interested in politics. I’m from York, PA. Assume I wanted to run for Congress. I could go to this website, register, put my picture up, and do a form of KYC – Know Your Customer – so that no one is doing this as a joke or for someone else. With this, I can fill out a survey which then rates my political views on a spectrum. I can also have some essays and links to my main page. Additionally, I could post videos there. Maybe this site costs me $100 per month, as the costs to build and maintain would be rather high. This could weed out pretenders as well.

Additionally, on this page you could solicit for “digital” signatures. When new user register for the site – free to them – they also do a form of KYC. This is so you can digitally sign things – like if a candidate needed signatures to get on a ballot. To me, I could do this for $100 a month as a politician myself, rather than having to hire a volunteer coordinator, rent office space, and have them run around town trying to get signatures for me for a person they never heard of.

I could create a video, it be shared out on facebook, Twitter, etc – and users on this site could go there and sign for me. Meaning, I put up one good video with thousands of hits, and I can get my signatures needed within hours instead of months.

Additionally, this platform could then potentially host debates or Q&A sessions – maybe an “ask me anything” sort of forum. There can be Twitter Spaces types of events where candidates can come talk to users.

So, if anyone wants to work with me on a site like that, let’s talk.

Perhaps the local party of my choosing doesn’t want to include me, because I’m not left wing or right wing enough. If you have a large following, you might get the attention of your local party. But the question then, is why are your local parties needed? Right now, it’s probably to connect you to people in the know. Connect you to fund raisers. Important people in the community the party backs. But with the system I’m thinking about, this makes the party less important than the ideas. The party will then want to be in the business of you, rather than the other way around.

I feel IF there is a means, like a website/app that can get people involved, a candidate can use this platform to run a campaign themselves. There could also be a lot of resources there for people who wanted to get involved in politics. What types of government positions are out there to run for, how to get them, etc.

What I would do when there

First things first, I’d need to understand in depth how the system works currently. And, I’d probably spend a lot of time documenting things and putting this up on my website for all to see. IF I were to do this, I’d like to do between 2-5 terms. That’s assuming I could get .001% of the vote for my first term. But I say this because here’s how I would operate:

Term 1 – understanding the committees, how things are currently being done, how PACs are all over the place, what is money needed for, and how I can get it out of politics. Introduce term limits within the first month. RUN on term limits. Documenting what services the federal government is doing. Work to bring sound money back. This doesn’t necessarily mean “gold backing” but it does mean that gold will be money again to settle debts, and I would like to use the commodities we do have to thus create our money from this. But it’s going to be a 10 year process as we draw down costs at the central levels.

Term 2 – propose bills on how to streamline many services, and privatize others to reduce our costs. Get involved with the cybersecurity (and digital privacy) of our nation at a policy level and provide protection for US-based companies under a form of shield to purchase IT services from. Right now, there is nothing stopping nation states from hacking your local company. Bill and Fred in IT have no idea they are even compromised.

Term 3-5 – get more involved with leadership of some committees. Continue to work to streamline government and eliminate all pork from bills. Work to limit federal government power over its citizens and partner with states to take on more of these services. IF you are California and you want to provide free healthcare for all of your citizens and non-citizen residents – GREAT – but you pay the bill, not Idaho. I had also written about HOW a central bank digital currency (CBDC) COULD work – IF there was a privacy bureau that could mask all transactions – but I don’t think at this point a CBDC could be done without some form of civil war. I’m not kidding. People running the show right now who are considering this have little to no understanding how people on the street are feeling about this. While it COULD be done well, it’s not going to be.

Me as a candidate?

I am disgusted with politics. The big reason is that there is massive money now going towards these positions due to the nature of bills at the top level then having consideration from some of the world’s largest companies to donate. This puts people in a position where it’s brass knuckles politics against people. Nope. Not for me.

What I would prefer to do would be to talk about what I stand for. And, perhaps point out differences in my style and positions from my competitors. Politics at the national level I think is something where it’s no-nonsense and you have a lot of psychopaths running things that are wired in an alpha way and are “ends justify the means” people. Instead, I’d perhaps look at it like a job interview, where I can speak about what I bring to the table. I would PREFER to look at a candidate, tell the voters that person is a good man/woman and not disparage them, in any way. The problem is, to unseat an incumbent – you have to apparently run attack ads. These cost money. I do not want to do that.

Meaning, my website seems like the best idea to me, to illustrate what I would stand for. I’d allow the voters to spend some time and compare me against others. For this reason, a lot of the videos would have to 1-2 min videos which gives a few bullets and reasons.

Angry people

Right now, there’s a lot of angry people in my country. Those of you not living in this country and reading this can’t quite grasp what is going on here. Mostly, to me, we have a few things brewing:

  1. Inflation and costs are rising much faster than wages. Middle class disappearing. This is creating ungodly amounts of stress – and we continue to have trillion dollar deficits which is exacerbating the problems.
  2. Control over you at the federal government level is creating a lot of angry people. I was livid over vaccine mandates, and this is partially why I’m discussing a lot of the items in this. To me, it seems we need to be in the business of leaving people the hell alone.
  3. Culture wars – people forcing their belief systems on you. The left doesn’t want the right to force church on them in schools or on TV or in the house. The right doesn’t want the left to force their woke agendas on them. Rather than these things being left to communities, they are being pushed at the nation-state level.
  4. Media – I always thought of the media as the 4th branch of government, in that it can provide checks and balances to the executive, legislative, and judicial systems. However, with more money sloshing in the system now, news media are competing for advertising dollars – which needs viewers – which then results in salacious news stories to entice viewers and clicks. This is not your federalist papers. This is not Ben Franklin running a newspaper. This is kneecapping everyone to get the scoop and ruin peoples’ lives for clicks. The media has become far more powerful than the 3 branches of government. Combined. They shape narratives and tell you how to think. We NEED the media to hold government accountable. But who is the media accountable to? To me, I’d be looking at Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890 to split up these empires.

Conclusion

As is, I can’t run at the moment given my job. Perhaps someday if my job changed or I had no bills, perhaps I could do it. Of most issue, certain types of jobs won’t allow you to run for office and hold that job, as it could create problems and many employers may fire you. Ask yourself the last time you saw an accountant run for the House? You probably see rich lawyers, doctors, and perhaps retired military or police who may have pensions and no current job.

IF I did something like this, I’d probably need to talk with some sort of campaign manager who could point someone like me in the right direction, but given that I would not run and try and get millions in campaign funds, there’s no money in it for them to advise/help. In this case, it might make sense for a local party to cover these expenses for consulting, but I’m not holding my breath.

It would be an honor to do something like this someday. Most people I know would immediately throw water on it. “It’s too hard”. “No way you could win”. In both cases, they are probably right – but I’ve never really been someone to listen to people be negative. I think of a bartender from the Bronx who more or less upended the political world. While I do NOT agree with her politics, I do commend that she felt passionate enough to do something and stuck her neck out to do it. You risk humiliation if losing. But for some people, they have nothing to lose by doing it. For me, I have everything to lose, so people like me have to be pragmatic.

But I’d also like to be optimistic. When there were times back in the day where common people can answer the call to serve their country in some way, and no get rich in the process. Can it happen for me? Not likely. But you are also reading the words of a guy who was HS friends with the guy who invented YouTube. We shared a best friend. So, when you are in the orbit of people who did big things, you then have to wonder – why NOT me? Perhaps his fate was one in a million, and I’m too close to the sun. But that also could be a door opener of knowing people (or having known people) who have done big things with their lives.

I started my writing in political essays maybe 30 years ago in high school. I was part of JSA (junior statesman of America) which was a debate team in HS. My political writing then went to MySpace, then Facebook. I created this blog with political writings as well as many other things – but then it led to health blog writing/exercise writing, along with then my stumbling upon sound money with gold and silver. I have zero problems going DEEEEEP on issues. But the bigger problem today is that many of the items I had put pen to paper on 20 years ago would get me canceled today. And, I can’t do that with having a wife, kids, and job.

So, for now, I have to wonder “what if”. I have done camera interviews on YouTube, about subjects I’m pretty knowledgeable about. I have an IT undergrad, a cyber security master’s, and an MBA which helped me a ton with the business side of things. I have written about all kinds of topics, and perhaps the next few months/years I look into…

  1. the political website idea to streamline how common people can get into politics. Sort of like getting rid of the music industry for iTunes and $1 music, we have to get rid of the “political industry” to get career politicians out of office.
  2. writing short persuasive essays on potential political positions
  3. doing short videos on different topics
  4. creating a website through wordpress for a future POSSIBLE candidacy where my views are shown

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