Comments for the Federal Budget

The budget proposed by the President includes cuts to many important programs. The only acceptable cuts are to the Military Strategic Defense (nuclear) funding by unilaterally reducing warhead count (only 50 can ever be used), transfer of funding for the DEA and drug law enforcement to medical care for addicts, and elimination of subsidies for all businesses operating in multiple states.

The DoD needs an increase in funding of one billion dollars per year for repairs and upgrades required by the flooding of bases. Two billion dollars per year are required for repairs and upgrades of infrastructure due to our changing climate (including new water storage, aquifer injection, and better-designed flood control).

Funding for Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security must be Increased by 10% as a start toward restoring past cuts. Before Medicare can be expanded to cover more people, compensation to providers must be increased by 30%.

Farms were hard hit this year (both by the president's trade policies and by flooding), and small farmers (those operating in only one state) need no-interest loans to bridge them over the next two years. Priority must be given to farmers who are converting to no-till farming with drip irrigation (a two year, topsoil saving project).

Funding for the National Flood Insurance forgiveness and doubled funding for floodplain mapping are required because of our changing climate. FEMA is not qualified to perform floodplain mapping - supervision must be transferred to the NOAA.

Funding for all scientific and intelligence agencies must be restored to 2016 levels, with a 6% inflation increase. Homeland Security needs an increase in funding to increase monitoring of publicly available social media content and communication addressing (Project Thin Wire) for signs of impending domestic violence, workplace violence, school violence, and suicide (all to be reported to local authorities), and domestic terrorism.

Funding must be authorized for proper housing and care for immigrants detained for lack of a visa. By law, they must be treated as asylum-seekers until a court decrees otherwise. All detainees without a felony warrant must be kept in dormitory-style housing with real beds and bathroom privacy. All detainees are eligible for Medicaid and must be provided with a medical examination and medical care. All detained minors must be monitored by state Children's Services and must receive public school education. All detainees are entitled to an attorney with a caseload no larger than the prosecutors. All detainees must receive an English Immersion language education.

Dealing with Climate Change

Any Climate Change initiative must also target methane as well as carbon dioxide entering the environment because methane is a much stronger greenhouse gas than CO2. Methane leaks from the petroleum industry and manufacturing are out of control and must be reduced by 90% (by the petroleum industry, I include natural gas collection, hydraulic fracturing, petroleum cracking, and transport).

An effective Climate bill should include (dates and amounts are suggestions):

1) Require that all burning of coal or coal products in the US be terminated by January 1, 2024, including steel manufacturing and prohibit the importation of new steel or electricity created by burning coal or coal products after that date.

2) No new licenses for new energy generation facilities in the United States, powered by burning fossil fuels, may be issued after one year after the law is passed. No energy generation facilities within the United States shall install new fossil fuel burners after 2040.

3) Carbon dioxide, methane, organic vapors, and halogenated organic gases must be defined as air pollutants and subject to fines for release beyond regulatory levels from commercial sources; a cap and trade system should be included. The regulations must price carbon dioxide at $100 per kg (in 2020 dollars), methane at 20 times the carbon dioxide level, and halogenated organic gases at 100 times the carbon dioxide level. Beginning in 2025, the cap must be reduced by 5% (five percent) per year relative to 2015 releases.

3a) This applies to all commercial processes and all commercial sales. This includes (but is not limited to) the sales of fuel, production of cement, and fermentation).

3b) Carbon dioxide released from burning biowaste shall be excluded. Wood harvested from living plants over 10 years old shall not be considered biowaste unless it is recycled material.

3c) Generation of pollutants by end-user burning of fuels shall be applied to the cap of the fuel provider.

3d) Generation of electricity through fuel cells is burning.

4) Phosphorus, nitrogen, sodium, potassium, all organic compounds, and all toxins are water pollutants.

4a) The release of these materials into freshwater or soil from agricultural or urban sources shall be subject to the same cap and trade system as in (3). Phosphate releases shall be priced at $200 per kg, non-biodegradable toxins priced at $100 per gram (one hundred thousand dollars per kilogram), biodegradable toxins at $1000 per kg, and others as determined by regulatory agencies.

5) Effective January 1, 2030, no new vehicles intended to be powered by burning fossil fuel may be manufactured in the United States. No vehicles manufactured after that date that burn fossil fuels may be imported into the United States, may dock in the United States, may land in the United States, or be transshipped through the United States.
5b) Vehicles burning biofuels shall be excluded from this restriction.

6) Nothing in this law is intended to override stricter regulations or stricter local or state laws.

7) Appropriation of two hundred fifty million dollars ($250,000,000) per year in alternate energy and pollution recovery research to the National Science and Technology Foundation annually through 2050. Pollution recovery is the extraction of pollutants from the air, water, or soil to either render the material useful or store it in a non-toxic form.

7a) This funding may be used for research into processes intended to reduce solar radiation entering the lower atmosphere, provided the process does not reduce photosynthesis.

7b) Grants for research into efficient creation of fuels from waste material may be funded from this allocation.

8) Appropriation of four times the median annual income for retraining of each person whose job is lost due to changes in businesses required for the implementation of this law, for climate improvement during the 5 years prior to the passage of this law, or due to automation after the passage of this law.

9) The budget of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and the United States Department of Agriculture shall be increased to monitor and advise on these provisions.

10) An allocation equal to ten percent (10%) of the budget of the Department of Defense shall be made for assistance in mitigation of droughts, floods, rising sea level, storm damage, and other weather extremes.

11) The allocation to the NOAA shall include doubling of computer power for climate and weather modeling every 4 years and doubling of the number of pollution and weather monitoring equipment by the year 2030.

The War on Drugs is a War on Americans

"Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."

That requires an end to laws against people doing things to be happy (elimination of Puritanism in our laws). Laws that are based on specific ideas of propriety are contrary to good government.

Treating drug addiction as a medical problem instead of a criminal problem will save at least 50,000 US lives per year.

Drug Scheduling must be revised such that drugs are not illegal because they are "Abusable." The only drugs that should be in Schedules 1 and 2 are those that are severely harmful or physically habituating and interfere with life.

As we learned in the 1880s, outlawing a drug increases the attraction to use of that drug. Any drug that is not more dangerous than Alcohol should not be restricted. Habituating drugs that do not prevent a normal life should not be restricted.

Dangerous drugs include PCP and any other drug that, when taken in a reasonable dose, causes more than 1% of people to become a danger to themselves or the people around them. Additionally, any drug that causes fatal or nearly fatal reactions in more than 1% of people who take the drug for the first time is dangerous.

Any drug determined to be safe and effective in an Industrialized Nation should be available for import to the US and use under prescription, if necessary. No separate US testing should be required, and if the drug is manufactured in the US, it should be as a generic.

Drugs that are safe when taken orally in reasonable doses should be made available as a generic oral formulation, even if the drug is dangerous when injected or inhaled. That is especially important for long-term substitutes for dangerous opioids.

Finally, drugs with at least a 10-year history of use by humans or animals, in any nation, without serious side effects should be legal for that use in the US. An example is DMSO (Dimethyl Sulfoxide), a widely used topical pain reliever illegal for human use in the US, but with over a century of veterinary use in the US (it cannot be tested in a double-blind study).

None of this means that manufacturing for sale or sale without a license of an intoxicating drug should be universally legal. States may require licenses for sale of a drug and may restrict the sale of a drug to minors.

None of this allows the use of a drug in a manner that causes a hazard to others (such as driving while intoxicated with alcohol, nicotine, or any other impairing drug).