Linux in the Oval Office

[Rick Hohensee]

or cLIeNUX, for you punk Fedorans that think cLIeNUX isn't unix.



Presidential platform of Rick Hohensee, July 2004

I want to be President so that I can try to...


Replace the Pledge of Alliegance with daily recitals of varying paragraphs
of the Constitution. Provide every public school student in grades 5 and
up a copy of the Constitution every year.

De-authorize all covert activities outside tactical operations in active
war zones.

Reaffirm that the "war on terror" is mostly diplomacy and police work when
prosecuted by the competent, and only becomes all-out war when prosecuted
by the incompetent and/or corrupt.

Personal assessment of the impact of depleted uranium munitions with the
full information-gathering power of the office of President.

Call off The Crusades by isolating and peacefully dismantling Israel.
Follow this up concurrently by demanding peace in Sudan and similar.

Reduce legacy government secrets as close as possible to nothing. That is,
I will massively reduce "classified information", particularly older
documents, probably everything over 5 years old except for nuclear
technologies and similar.

Implement a closely controlled self-prescription program for adults to use
such drugs as cocaine, heroin, marijuana and penicillin. That is, I will
call off the corrupt drug war and de-glamourize narcotics.

De-commission the CIA entirely, and un-authorize them totally,
immediately. Out them all in about 6 months. Re-deploy them under INS.

Remove the term "intelligence" from what it was the CIA used to do. Think
"strinfo".

Eliminate covert operations outside actual war zones immediately. Such
behavior is well beneath the greatest nation ever. 

Biometrically identify every non-citizen on US soil I can get my hands on.

One immigration rule. (Al Sharpton)

Promote the vote for ex-criminals. Sue if necessary in support of this.

Teach evolution as scientific fact and the Bible, Talmud, Koran, the
Analects, the Tao Te Ching, Aristotle's Ethics, Machiavelli and so on as
ethics studies. Foster an Ethics Channel on TV.

Enforce the law with emphasis on the most priviledged facing the closest
scrutiny. This is my affirmative action policy. I am quite fatigued with
rich white men giving me a bad name.

Prosecute George Walker Bush for crimes against humanity.

Legalize insider trading.

Investigate deportation of Sun Myung Moon for illegal donations to North
Korea. Not to mention he quite literally thinks he's God.

Get out of Iraqi cities immediately, including vacating the Green Zone,
and retreat to functions of state and federal governments, until the
cities form regional alliances analagous to nations as they see fit.

Eliminate the "not for profit" designation for corporations, churches,
schools, trust funds and anything else. Charity is taxable income. If the
government wants to subsidize something it can do it accountably, by
direct subsidy.

Ensure voting systems accountable to the electorate nationwide, such as my
own "votescript".

Pardon Martha Stewart due to the brazen political nature of her
prosecution.

Invite the Congress to take over the Anthrax and Chandra Levy
investigations using the U.S. Capitol Police and any Executive Branch law
enforcement capabilities they may wish to avail themselves of, such as the
Postal Inspector's forces.

List all prisoners at Guantanamo and what they are accused of. (Most will
probably be released)

Eliminate economic status requirements, particularly college degree
requirements, from positions and licenses granted by the government.

Plead to the Supreme Court to exclude Florida from the Electoral College
for the rest of JEB Bush's governorship plus 13 years.

Prosecute Katherine Harris for treason.

Prosecute the management of Diebold Corp. for treason.

Make global support of secular democracy the keystone of foreign policy.
For example, the USA can no more support a Jewish state in Palestine than
an Episcopal state in Langley Virginia. I consider "secular" to be a
fundamental aspect of "nation". Non-secular regions will not be considered
nations, officially.

Invite 70% of the US military above the rank equivalent to Sargeant Major
in the Army to resign immediately, with congratulations on winning the
Cold War. And with the idea that they will not contribute to the loss of
the peace crucial to the finances of the Bush Crime Family. I'll keep
generals with surnames starting with, say, F through L or something to
maintain some continuity during The Big Stand-Down. Maintain a potent,
progressive, but perhaps significantly smaller military in terms of active
personnel.

Return reserves to thier proper roles. (John Kerry)

Hand over Halliburton functions in Iraq to the US military and mideastern
engineering firms. Let Iraqis rebuild Iraq.

Overhaul the White House press corps to exclude the major war infomercial
networks, ABC, NBC, CBS and so on.

Make it unlawful for entities other than individuals to contribute funds
to political campaigns.

Conduct a variety of political autopsies, such as on Nicholas Berg.

Establish a position of national developmental sports promoter and invite
Cal Ripkin to take his work federal.

Make my life as President extremely public. The adult public will be able
to monitor most of my personal activity via live motion pictures. Big
Brother is already here. I give the people of the USA the option of
keeping an unblinking eye on Big Brother if they are so inclined.

Convert the Executive Branch to use of open-source computer operating
systems, such as Linux, BSD, or Plan 9 From Bell Labs. The military will
be ordered to do so. I hope they aren't waiting for orders.

Make all publications of the government available by FTP download from the
Internet in effectively non-proprietary data formats.

Implement checks and balances on law enforcement such that no jurisdiction
can monopolize the evidence pertaining to any death.

Increase personal financial accountability of members of Congress
and lobbyists and lobbying organizations. 

Task the FBI with a detailed study of every case of someone dying in
police custody in the US in the last ten years.

Implement a graduated progressive debt-monetization schedule for the
Reagan/Bush National Debt to eventually eliminate the regressive debt
costs left by fiscal incompetents.

Generalize the definitions of criminal anti-competitive behavior to better
protect small businesses and economic diversity. Lots of things Microsoft
does legally will become illegal.

Ensure that transportation policy emphasize pedestrians and other
human-power transport first, then mass transit, then roads. I will
encourage buses, in particular, publicly and privately operated.

Establish a cabinet-level auditing office, with a general permanent
mandate and authorization to eliminate corruption and improve efficiency
throughout the Executive Branch.

Reduce the implementation costs of the tax system and the welfare system
by simplifying the income tax code to a single simple formula with a
positive component, formerly mis-named as the proposed "negative income
tax". Thus there will be no brackets. The top tax rate should be about 50%
and the top positive tax rate should provide a homeless man with about
$10-- a day.

Eliminate parasitic "protectionist" tariffs, farm and other
subsidies to the advantaged. 

Require all products bodily ingested by humans, such as cigarettes, have
thier ingredients listed as is now the case for most foods. This will
include products with long-standing exemptions from such requirements,
such as COCA Cola.

Improve employability and general functionalization services to the
homeless, literacy programs generally, and many other areas currently
exhibiting barbaric and outrageously costly neglect. Another area that I
personally find emblematic of the neglect the USA bestows upon it's
helpless, my pet peeve if you will, is the condition of the average public
basketball backboard. A decent outdoor basketball goal is a very
cost-effective thing. Expect to see full regulation-dimensions rectangular
backboards with straight rims appearing when I am President. Maybe even
nets. Expect neglect to decrease generally.

Emphasise the Internet in education.

I support statutes and regulations that result in a decrease in the gross
bulk of statutes and regulations for the sake thereof, such as more use of
parametric "schedules" such as the well-known "GS-16" schedule of
government salaries. A quick glance at the US Code suggests that it could
easily be smaller by a factor of 4 or more.

Manage my legislative agenda like an open source software project, with
input from the general population via an FTP site or web wiki.

Gun control is a population density issue. A moose gun is insane in
Manhatten. Being without one is insane in most of Alaska.  A simple tax
can be developed based on how many people are in range of a weapon. Let's
say the tax is 5 cents a year for each human within range of a weapon.
That's 20 cents for a moose gun in the outskirts of Nome, and hundreds of
thousands of dollars for a moose gun in Manhatten. The details need some
work, but therein lies the solution. There are a number of possible
side-effects, like gun shops become inately rural businesses, which is a
good thing. There's also a one-second factor, like 5 cents for each round
the thing can fire in one second, times population density. Thus assault
weapons cost more at about thier fire rate.

I suggest several Constitutional amendments. This listing is not the exact
language contemplated.....

	The President may not pardon his own minions. He may petition the
	Congress to do so. This is the Nixon/Ford amendment, long overdue.

	Growing any naturally bred photosynthetic plant species in any
	quantity is a basic right of adult citizens.

	Voting in all elections of the USA shall be by approval basis, one
	vote per voter per candidate. Plurality shall be the elective
	margin. Vote counting shall be by direct popular count. There
	shall be hard physical documentation of each ballot.

	All ballots in the USA shall include a "None Of The Above"
	synthetic candidate. If None Of The Above wins, the contested
	office shall be filled by a suitable lottery of voters for None Of
	The Above.

	Border States may secede from the USA.

	Border jurisdictions of States may change States.

	I favor the creation of at-large Representatives and Senators.


The above amendment to allow growing any herb could be constructed so as
to foster family farms and serve as a permanent seedbed for small
businesses.

Reassess the health risks of cyclamates versus aspartame. Note that Donald
Rumsfeld was a key lobbyist for aspartame.

Abolish diplomatic immunity outside embassies. The US doesn't have royals,
and doesn't aknowledge them on our soil.

Change the names of Blair Mansion, the Ronald Reagan White Elephant and
Internationalist Boondoggle Center, Reagan National Airport, the J. Edgar
Hoover Building, and the Herbert Hoover Building.

Increase compensation to federal elected officials.

Set up a history ftp/website in the Education department

Promise MLB baseball games in Cuba if Castro adopts a constitution based
on the template on my webpage.

Marriage is not a federal concern. The proposed tax formula will provide
positive taxes (back to the person) to dependants, not married couples per
se.

Establish a national blues jam on the South Lawn of the White House in the
summer.

The legal tradition of the USA has some fundamental quirks going back to
English Common Law that need fixing. Malice, intent, custodial
relationships, sanity and other subtleties are sentencing issues, not
corpus delecti.

There is no specific labor policy at this time. Labor interests should
note the elimination of degree requirements from positions licensed by the
government, the possible huge increase in manpower to the INS via the
de-commissioning of the CIA, the improved immigration enforcement possible
in the absence of a corrupt drug war, the reduction in impetus of Latin
Americans to emigrate to the US in the absense of a corrupt drug war, the
top tax rate of 50%, and other policies that help the working man, woman
or family directly, but not explicitly.

I oppose capital punishment. It's not cost-effective. 

As President I'll probably be able to get some things off the ground that
aren't political per se, such as osimplay, cycluphonics, the Gitslik and
Rixpik and so on.

Life begins when you no longer blame everything on your mother. If I don't
get the into White House, I blame my mother. 



Rick (Richard Allen) Hohensee
independant candidate for President

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