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Well it just so happens I've been thinking about this very issue -- here's a letter I sent to my three congressional reps and the President:

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Dear Mr. President:
cc: Ms. Dole:
cc: Mr. Burr:
cc: Ms. Fox:

Part of your legacy will come from September 11th.
Part of your legacy will come from your response to Katrina and Rita. The inconsistent-at-best response to Katrina proved the $100 billion and 4 years spent since 9/11 was inadequate if not mostly wasted.

Four years later, you have another opportunity; a rare second chance to re-weave America’s social and political fabric.

Here’re some starter ideas, taken from recent headlines:

1 -- Abolish Welfare as we know it. After 40 years and a trillion dollars, it clearly does not work. The continuation of it and a dozen or so similar give-away programs does nothing to solve problems of the chronic poor.

Everybody needs occasional help, but folks really need meaningful jobs. Jobs for the million newly unemployed, doing Katrina cleanup and rebuild, turn welfare checks into paychecks.

Use the opportunity for job training and skill development. Grow American citizens from Welfare --> to Workfare --> to Work Fair --> and into Our Fair Citizens. Teach them to fish.

2 -- Saving for the future is no longer optional. This means the citizen and this means the Government. For the next half century, require the Federal Government to live well below its budget, until America no longer holds the obscene debt levels that are a great threat to all American, except those that have pilfered enough already, and we all of know many who have.

3 -- Live here, benefit from America, and pay your fair share of taxes. If you’re wealthy, pay more than your share; you’ll still have lobster whenever you want.

4 -- Rethinking the new transportation bill, loaded with enough pork to fund the entire Katrina-ravaged infrastructure. Interstate 10 has priority over the infamous Alaskan Bridge to NoWheresVille.

5 -- Rebuild America's manufacturing base. Short-term gains from factories shipped overseas are destroying our critical infrastructure. China and India will understand.

Tell American Business’ the hiring of illegal immigrants will no longer be tolerated.

Communities and states may longer bid against each other for businesses; the money trail just is too messy.

Reverse the not well thought out waiver of labor laws, which only guarantees huge salaries to the few through exploitation of many. Make wages adequate to raise a family, pay health insurance, and save for the future.

6 -- Similarly, repeal the new bankruptcy bill - Katrina confirmed legitimate concerns.

7 -- Toss the energy bill. It saves no energy and only enriches those already rich.

8 -- Instead of throwing away the environment laws, let American ingenuity - and American Engineering - and American Manufacturing - develop solutions that will make our grandchildren proud.

We are at a tipping point here - let's tip in the best direction.

Your Pal
JDR

This letter is a page taken right off a John Kerry campaign speech. The three paragraphs can be summed up to one sentence that reads "Some are not satified and want a change".

JDR, your post is more comprehensive than John Kerry's often talked about "plan". He should have hired you for advice.

What's up with all the ship references lately? That's just a little too strange to have 2 letters within days of each other comparing our political system to boats.

"So where do we start? We have to map out where we need to be and how long it will take to get there. Of course, the cost has to be factored in."

What vague blather! Doom & gloom: our ship is sinking. You are exactly right Hugh, we need a "plan" to turn it around.

JDR: anyone write you back? Burr & Howard Coble have replied to my past letters, but never Dole.

Dan:

Virgina has been very responsive since the get-go. I thought her "I will never raise taxes" speach was naive, but after listening to Vernon Robinson rant about terrorist crossing the Mexican border to take videos in down-town Charlotte .. I decided her naivety was better than the truely dangerous Robinson, so she got me vote.

Dole at first sent form letters, but now she is writting back more personally - I only write these folks every few months or so ...

Burr was totally clueless for the longest time, but I acutally recieved a germain response the other day.

Hugh:

I wrote to Kerry during the swift boat thing - and suggested he start buying billboards - on the left: an xray of his leg showing the schrapnel he apparently carries, with the words "Kerry's War Record", and on the right: a dental xray with the words "Bush's War Record".

No response.

Let me humbly state my unequivocal opinion: Kerry is / was a looser, but Bush is genuinely dangerous to the America I love.

Man I wish we had real choices.

Dan, in order to get Dole to respond to your letters they must be postmarked in Kansas.

JDR, those are wonderful suggestions. The Work-Fare program that has been suggested in the past reminds me of FDR's plans from the Depression. Teach someone to fish is exactly what would break the cycle of Well-I-don't-have-to-work-because-mom-and-dad-don't-work-and-the-government-gives-them-a-check-fare.

As for the two letters in consecutive days dealing with comparing the nation to a ship, that's been an analogy used over and over by poiticians. Nautical metaphors and similies abound during election year speeches. "The course of the nation needs to come-about and sail into a new era of prosperity." I heard that somewhere in my days.

Dan, I don't know about anyone else but I often wonder exactly how one could word a post or letter about the deplorable state our nation is in and NOT elicit your well worn "doom and gloom" response. You seem to take personally every reference to anything being wrong with our country and the need to address it. Are you in total denial?

JRD, I don't care where the letter came from, the content addresses some prime issues. However, how is our nation going to handle the crime that will inevitable result from a discontinuation of welfare? The budget cuts have decreased the police force everywhere.

I'm all for personal accountability and self-sufficiency. I also think it is a good idea to phase out free money to ablebodied people. The transition is what concerns me.

Re: Welfare & JDR's Workfair Plan

Welfare is gone and we already HAVE a work program. And WorkFirst has a 60-month LIFETIME limit.

Workfirst Family Assistance:
http://www.co.guilford.nc.us/government/socservices/#workfam

Workfirst Employment Services:
http://www.co.guilford.nc.us/government/socservices/#workem

The only cash assistance (welfare) program remaining (that doesn't require education, job-training or employment) is disability (through SSA), and it is becoming increasingly difficult and taking much longer for disabled folks to be approved for that program.

We have programs that assist with food and medical care, but they have all kinds of eligibility requirements. We have housing programs, but they have even more requirements and lengthy (often years long) waiting lists.

This idea that there's some big welfare gravy train out there for poor folks is just NOT reality. Come hang out a while in the community and get a reality check.

Peace, Missy

Yvonne, I'm not in denial that there are problems in the world, there always have been and always will be. However, I'm more of an optimist than the doom and gloom crowd. This country has weathered wars, natural disasters, scandals, you name it and it always survives. This even despite the negative media that tell us 10,000 dead in New Orleans, mass rape & murder when it is not true.

My point is writers like Ms. Elkins use the doom & gloom card but offer no concrete suggestions on how to improve our problems. A statement like "We have to map out where we need to be and how long it will take to get there" means absolutely nothing. So I don't have much empathy for the whiners who have no solutions.

I don't have much empathy for the whiners that offer no concrete suggestions on how to improve our problems.

Jeeze DAN - does that mean I can count on your vote this next election?

You may get my vote JDR, I like some of your ideas on welfare, pork spending, and immigration. My only complaint is how you see corporations as inherently evil and out to screw their employees.

Dan, perhaps you should ask those people in Lexington how they feel about big corporations sending all the work to China. At one time there one plant employeed over three thousand people. Now they employ just over six hundred. When it comes to big corporations, the bottom line is always the almighty dollar.

Well Dan - Joe said it for me. "When it comes to big corporations, the bottom line is always the almighty dollar."

Most "companies" start as small enterprises, often with a single really good idea. With hard work, the American culture of creativity and independent thought (the single-most important element, and arguable the envy of the world), a good idea becomes a product and a company and all that is good and great with our country. You and I both know millions of examples.

Here's the thing: At some point - the money takes over. Many say the love of Money is the root of all evil, and I think the the Bible even has some words about it too.

So these great companies get into making money to the point of becoming inherently evil. They don't set out to screw their employees so much as to not let their employees get in the way of making money for the owners - which at this point is the stock-holder.

Stock-holders have no compassion for falling values, and the Executives are "responsible" to keep that from happening. The Executives are out to keep their job (read as cash in the bank) - Period. They also claim they have "all the risk", and therefore are entitled to compensation that would make the every-man's head spin.

To compomlicate things, these same Executives have learned that the single best way to keep or loos the status quo is through government action or inaction. They have made the most of this relationship, through "contributions", which some like myself call influence peddling.

Unfortunately, You and I both know countless of examples of this happening.

If you have legitamate counter-arguments, I'd love to hear them -

Schmoe, Here is the reason those jobs (I assume furniture or textile)left Lexington.
American consumers want cheap furniture, clothes and other goods, myself included. I just bought a full bedroom suite for my daughter for $500.

American corporations pay their employees ohhh, $8-$20/hour + insurance, 401K, work comp, safety, environmental, ADA, social security, legal expenses due to trial lawyers like John Edwards, and the other myriad of costs involved with having employees.

The Chinese I guess pay their employees a few bucks a day, I'm not sure but that's my best guess. I would also assume, for better or worse, they do not have the myriad of laws that we have which cost business alot of money to operate here.

Sooooo, assuming the quality is about the same, the bedroom suite for my daughter if made in the USA would probably cost 2-3 times more. Since alot of consumers are not willing to pay that much, they buy the cheaper imported stuff. Please tell me how the American company is supposed to compete?

JDR, we live in a capitalist society. This system can produce greed and corruption, but so does socialism, communism, and any other system, that is human nature. We have laws in place to correct for that, I am personally glad these Enron, Tyco and other crooks are going to spend time behind bars.

I work with many sized companies from Fortune 500 to one person operations. I have been to a few thousand manufacturing plants, hospitals, clinics, construction sites, and offices in the last 20 years. People choose to work for these employers, they can go somewhere else if they wish. Everyone has gripes in life, but I don't see a bunch of workers complaining to me that their employer is out to screw them.

I have also toured factories in Europe, where I do see constant strikes and employees whining that their employer won't give them National Potato Day as a paid holiday (read Unions). I have been to a few factories in Brazil and Carribbean, some of which were deplorable. I think by far we have the best system in the world in spite of the neverending laws and unions. I don't see anything wrong with the pursuit of profit. If I did, I would work for a charity.

So there are some bad apples, but I don't believe all corporations become inherently evil in the pursuit of profit as you state.

Dan:

You're right to not infer I meant "all corporations become inherently evil .. "

It is however a true statement that All corporations have the same single-minded task: to make money for the stockholders.

We as a people have a responsibility to assure that in pursuit of that single goal, these corporations do not hurt we-the-people, poison the air or water, etc. You and I both know this has happened and it continues to happen.

There is "general good" in the pursuit of profit - but there also need to be enforced guidelines.

The problem with the present "system" (and going back about 25 years) is that laws are being constantly re-written - and the people writing the laws are the ones that financially benefit from it.

Here's a very recent example - There was a Clean Air Act in place - and that law is being changed to allow power plants to emit 5 times more mercury than currently allowed, on the condition they eventually reduce it. I'm not making that up.

Now here's the situation – as Head of, you decide:

Does your industry spend money now - $3.5 billion dollars per year (per EPA estimates) to implement the old guidelines - which sounds like a lot but is only about 3% of the industry revenues, OR

… Alternative … (remember - there is "general good" in the pursuit of profit.)

Return that $3.5 billion to the shareholders (assuring yourself a big bonus, btw).

BTW - if you Return that $3.5 billion to the shareholders (also according to the EPA) there will, by 2020, be $61 billion per year in additional health disease costs. Consider this - that additional $61 billion per year will come out of TAXPAYERS funding, so Power USA will never incur those costs.

No brainer – huh? There is "general good" in the pursuit of profit.

So lets get Jeffrey Holmstead - once an industry lawyer who represented on air-quality issues - to head the EPA's Office of Air and Radiation. He can stop EPA professional and scientific staff before they develop regulations to control toxic mercury pollution from power plants. Instead, his office [will] inserted, sometimes verbatim, 12 paragraphs from legal documents prepared on behalf of industry interests by his former employer and other industry law firms.

Here's the result:

NEW BUSH PLAN
Sulfur Dioxide (SO2)
- 4.5 million tons in 2010
- 3 million tons in 2018
Nitrogen Oxides (NOx)
- 2.1 million tons in 2008
- 1.7 million tons in 2018
Mercury (Hg)
- 26 tons in 2010
- 15 tons in 2018

2001 EPA PLAN (Reject by Bush)
Sulfur Dioxide (SO2)
- 2 million tons in 2010
Nitrogen Oxides (NOx)
- 1.9 million tons in 2008
- 1.25 million tons in 2012
Mercury (Hg)
- 24 tons in 2008
- 7.5 tons in 2012, with 70% facility-specific reduction

Turn the ship around?? To borrow a metaphor: What and head it into a bottomless hole by plowing into a failed iceburg like LBJ's War On Poverty ?