Eliminate All Federal Subsidies

As of 2017, there are over 2,100 Federal subsidies and we've been adding about 100 new ones each year recently. They cost hundreds of billions of dollars every year – the lowest estimate I've seen is 400 billion dollars a year; the highest estimate is one trillion dollars a year. Elimination of all Federal subsidies would balance the budget and perhaps provide surpluses to pay down our massive national debt. We need to do that now and make it permanent.

Subsidies are hidden in every government departmental budget so that there is no viable way to view all of them together. Essentially, all of these subsidies amount to political bribes to help politicians get elected. All of them need to be eliminated. The largest subsidies, but not all subsidies, go to three major areas - state and local governments to help with the hiring of police and teachers plus other “needs”, farmers, and hundreds of charities. Let's examine each:

State and local governments, by law, must balance their budgets. We should never have given up this needed practice, of forcing state and local politicians to actually make the tough spending and revenue decisions to accomplish a balanced budget that they were elected to do, by allowing them to “out source” some of their spending decisions to the Federal government which is allowed to work without a balanced budget. Most of these subsidies are spent on our largest cities who have managed to avoid the tough decisions on budget balancing. No more. Over a 5 year period, in order to give them sufficient time to adjust their finances, reduce these subsidies by 20% a year, so that they are zero at the end of 5 years.

The average wealth of farmers is two million dollars each. The Federal government should not be subsidizing multi-millionaires. However, the Agricultural subsidy program is so large, that it cannot be withdrawn in one year without creating burdensome chaos. Therefore, cut these subsidies 20% a year to reach zero in 5 years, allowing farmers ample time to adjust to market realities.

Fortunately, most of the hundreds of charities subsidized by the Federal government only cover 10% or less of their annual budgets by these subsidies. Charities should be and are supported by people and businesses, and never should be supported by government. When government supports charities, it is telling all of us individual tax payers that no matter how much you gave to charity, even if it was 10% or more, it was not enough. Therefore, the Federal government is taxing us higher than it otherwise would so that it can force us to give even more to charity. That is just unfair and wrong for government to do to taxpayers. Eliminate all Federal subsidies to charities and do it immediately.
Finally, eliminate every other Federal subsidies immediately.

Israel and Palestine – The Universal Consequences of War

The Arab nations initiated and lost 5 wars with Israel, all with the intent to destroy Israel and wipe it from the face of the Earth. So, given those goals, if they had won any of those wars and captured part or all of Israel, we all know that not one square inch of territory would have been returned to Israel. So why should Israel, the victim of 5 wars against it in its short history as an independent nation, which has already returned some of their captured land from those wars back to the Palestinians, return any more land to them? That would just incent them and other Arab nations into a future war with Israel, since such a policy would create a situation where there would be no risk of losing territory. Also, keep in mind that the Palestinians have it in their charter still to destroy Israel and wipe it off the face of the Earth - so they therefore deserve no sympathy nor territory returned. Logically, there should be no peace negotiations with the Palestinians until they change their charter and recognize Israel's right to exist, plus stop sending rockets into Israeli territory. In the course of human history, nearly every war waged has resulted in some national boudaries being re-drawn. The risk of losing some or all of a nation's territory by starting a war is the largest incentive not to start a war. Let's not lose that incentive.

Minority Advancement – Government Handouts Are the Problem

Whatever group that was maligned hundreds of years ago - Blacks, Indians, etc., we need to stop making them dependent on government and tell them no more handouts - work hard to get ahead and avoid destructive behavior such as having fatherless families, drinking, drugs, not trying to get a good education, not disciplining your children, etc. We do them no favors by "excusing" their self destructive behavior which only holds them back from the good life that is available to them. There are enough success stories from people in these groups who worked hard while avoiding destructive behaviors, to prove to everyone that self help and determination is the only rational way to advance themselves and that continued government assistance hurts more than it helps.