As Emperor Overlord of the United States, This is What I’d Change (Fall 2008 Edition)

It’s a little known fact that in the United States, the vast cabal that actually makes the decisions often will confer with the Emperor Overlord as to the best way to conduct the affairs of the nation, both large and small. As I was successful in rending my predecessor into six very gory pieces fortunate to find myself in a position to be of use—although I think the term “Emperor Overlord” is a little ostentatious and smacks of Ming the Merciless—I thought the timing was not only propitious, but also impeccable. Though I haven’t a lot of time to think about those things that need immediate attention, I do have a few things that I’d like to see tended to:

Curtail Lawyers and MBAs

When I look around at much of what ails this country, lawyers far and away top the list. We have too many, by far. If we drastically reduce the number of lawyers, I guarantee that the number of frivolous lawsuits would shrink rapidly. These sorts of gambles are perpetrated in part by shysters (of which there will always be a percentage) and lawyers scrambling for work in any niche they can find. Reduce the competition and you will reduce the bottom dwelling.

Unfortunately, that’s not enough. We must also create a nationally consistent system of lawyer compensation so that they only earn a living from their profession instead of being the only winners in a judicial contest.

Actually, since I’m Emperor Overlord, after all, I would decree that lawyers all be pooled. When parties need an advocate(s) in court—whether that party is the largest conglomerate on the planet, or the meanest of our “wretched refuse”—that their councilors will be randomly selected by fair lot from that lawyer pool (owing for specialized knowledge, of course). That way everyone has an equal chance for fair representation. You don’t get to win just because you have money.

On the business side, we need to ditch this whole MBA thing. I audited these courses when they were available on my cable system, and all it really amounts to is: 1) finding ways to legally cook the books; 2) engulf and devour or perish. See, it’s all about whoever makes the most money wins. Never mind that it’s bad for the community or bad in the long term, as long as the money is flowing in NOW, you’re golden.

To be fair, a lot of non-MBA’d businesspeople are equally as cutthroat. But here’s the thing: MBAs are comforted by the concept of the widget. A widget is any product. It doesn’t matter what it is, what it does, it’s any product. As such, this generic product can be managed generically. You don’t have to be an expert in it. It doesn’t matter. It’s just a piece on the MBA game board.

But it does matter. Look at Apple Computer. You have CEO Jobs, who knows his product and is a believer…even though he might not do things the MBA way, he succeeds because HE KNOWS HIS BUSINESS. With a generic executive at the helm, Apple Computer tanks. It’s this way in most industries. If you have people in charge who know their product and believe in it, you will do well. If instead you have people who know how to jangle the formulas, but consider the product of the company as nothing more than widget, then you will end up with a company in trouble (e.g. many U.S. businesses).

I’m sure there must be a reason to have MBAs…there must be.  Isn’t there? Assuming that there is a reason for this discipline, let’s just limit the numbers who can get it. Just as with lawyers, I think a large part of the problem is mitigated by taking away the sorts of people who are largely at fault for causing the problem. So, instead of going to business school, we have executives actually learn about what it is they are selling. Have standard courses in straight-forward accounting (none of the shenanigans that we have now) so that everyone’s books are manageable. Imagine a world where the heads of movie and television studios aren’t “businesspeople”, but instead people who rose up from the industry and understand TV and film. Imagine a world where if you ask a CEO a question of any of their products, s/he can give a straight-forward, non-generic, non-double-talk answer.

Come to think of it, this quota idea isn’t useful just for lawyers and MBAs, but for things like doctors and such. We can manage the numbers of doctors in various specialties that are allowed to practice. There will be a lot of smart people who won’t be going to law school, so they might find a fit in one of the medical schools.

Sports

Responsible sharing of the profits needs to be a condition of sports ownership. In certain major sports (e.g. NFL, MLB, NBA), the compensation of the players is out of all proportion to their contribution to the nation as a whole. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t begrudge the players a hedge on their future lives given how much they have to give up physically. But when owners are paying tens/hundreds of millions in salary, and then turn around begging for public funds to build a new vanity stadium…well, something is desperately wrong. I say that in the richest sports the players salaries need to be drastically cut; part of the recovered funds used to pay for maintenance and building of facilities, and part put into a guaranteed investment fund that compensates players later for what they gave. Often, the players carry chronic and debilitating injuries from entertaining us, but few have the wherewithal to husband their money wisely to help them in their time of need. This would do that with no added pain to anyone.

Defense

First off…I’d get out of Iraq. Regardless of the spin being put on the results of “the surge”, the fact remains that as soon as the U.S. leaves, whenever that is, there is going to be a civil war. I say that we might as well let them have it if they want it so much. In exchange, we get the oil. That’s the price. If they want to fight, we get the oil.

We have to leave Iraq for a very important reason: we need to repair, restore, and build up the armed forces. The reason is simple: at some point in the future—when is unpredictable—there is going to be the Middle East war. Notice I wrote “the” and not “a”. We’re talking a big conflagration between all the parties that have festering animosity towards their neighbors. Muslim vs Jew. Arab vs Persian. Shiites vs Sunnis. You name it, they’ll fight it. Many other countries will get involved as well to the point that it could likely become a new World War. This is the prime war we need to prepare for. (We also need to prepare for the jungle war that is less certain to come, but first things first.)

In Iraq, the end result will be the same regardless…civil war. Look at what happened in Eastern Europe with the fall of their communist regimes.  Without that big ol’ force keeping the parties at bay and being a common focus of irritation, age-old hatreds re-emerged. We had civil wars all over the place…some of them still playing out. For the U.S., Iraq is just a money pit. We need to apologize for the mess a few poopy heads in Washington caused, and just get out.

Once we are out, we need to take the lessons learned and build new weapons of war to replace the ones we have been wearing out. While the techy stuff is really neat, I think we also need to make simple and reliable arms that can always be our foundation. Let’s face it, the AK-47 is the most popular rifle in the world for a reason…it just plain works and you don’t need six weeks of specialized training to use it.

I also think that we should take a page from General Robert E. Lee who is purported to have said: “It is well that war is so terrible–we would grow too fond of it!” I think that while our idea of a limited, precision war is nice for certain circumstances, I also think that there is a time for unapologetic full out warfare…collateral damages be damned. I think various poopy heads here and around the world would be a little less trigger-happy if full warfare was a realistic consequence of their actions. (And I’m talking conventional warfare…we need to have learned the terrible lessons of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and never use our stocks of nuclear weapons in anger.)

Justice

Being Emperor Overlord offers certain advantages, such as altering the face of the justice system. Heh…justice system. I should probably say legal system instead. Anyway…on to it.

When in jail or in prison, prisoners will be individually confined by a mechanism that prevents them from easily harming others or having others harm them. Incarceration should not be a living hell, merely an excision from the world for the duration of the sentence.

The first precept of sentencing should be restitution, followed by incarceration, and only then rehabilitation. After all, so what if a DWI goes to prison…how does that benefit the victim? No, there should be a method of direct restitution in conjunction with the rest of the sentence.

Sentences need to be proportional to the conditions of the crime. While mandatory sentencing is a lovely concept, it falls apart in any given case. There does need to be oversight in order to combat both hang-em and lenient judges.

By extension, we must abolish the so-called zero-tolerance laws (ZTL). In so many instances they are simply absurd and serve only the most small-minded in a community whose intelligence is so limited that they don’t think anyone else can use their own. I’ve known quite a few kids who got suspended from school for trying to STOP a fight, but the ZTL states that all persons involved in a fight must be suspended (hapless victims also get suspended). It makes my blood boil.

As for drugs…I just can’t get behind legalization, but it’s clear that the “war on drugs” has been even less successful than the war in Iraq. I think we need to bring the restitution into this again. You get convicted of drug use or small-time possession, you get community service, not jail/prison. The community service will be nasty…like cleaning sewer pipes and such. You know, the dirty jobs people don’t want to do but that need to be done. And not just busy work, either. Useful stuff. I don’t think it would take too long before the incidence of drug used started dropping…and we would reclaim tons of bed space in our penal system.

As for the courts…I’d change the discovery rules so that when either side, defense or prosecution, discovered evidence relevant to the case, it had to be disclosed—the court should be more interested in truth and justice than with who wins. I would have the jury be separate and unseen by the court. There is no constitutional provision that says a defendent has a right to face the jurors. Jurors have increasingly needed protection, and technology is such that this protection can be offered. I would also allow jurors to submit questions to seek out answers to those areas that neither lawyer seems willing to explore.

U.S. Auto Companies

Well, the chickens have definitely come home to roost, haven’t they? Because of the short-term profit motivation, the U.S. automakers are on the brink of disaster. As Emperor Overlord, I will grant them a deal. I will fund them over this little economic bump in the road, with a couple of conditions.

First, Ford and Chrysler have to merge their operations. There is no way I can bail out three companies, but I can do two. (Besides, how can I have competitive defense contract bidding if I make all three merge into one?) Second, the vehicles targeted for individual owners will be energy efficient, not only in terms of fuel, but also in terms of material creation and reclaimation. Last, the automakers lose all rights for Congressional lobbying. The lobbyists whining about how costly making fuel-efficient cars would be are what got the companies in this mess to begin with. Now, they get no say in the matter. If the companies want my money, then they’ll be my bitches.

Minimum Wage

It’s my belief that a person making minimum wage and working a full-time 40-hour week should have enough money to be able to scrape out housing, food, clothing, some communication and transportation, and required insurances. I will set three tiers of minimum wage based on the requirements of regional economics. The miniumum wage for New York City will be on the upper tier while that of some small backwater rural town will likely be at the lowest. This minimum wage will be tied, by law, to the current rate of inflation (so that this only has to pass the one time) and will receive its Cost Of Living Adjustment (COLA) on the same date every year.

Also, the COLA will be immediately adjusted by the same percentage amount as any increase in total benefits that the Congress votes for itself.

Television

Being Emperor Overlord means that I have to be economical with my time. I can’t go watch an hour-long TV show and waste 18+ minutes of it watching ads. I would command that at least 52 minutes of every hour be devoted to programming (like it used to be).

I will also decree that when program content is being shown, that crawls, programming “bugs” and other distractions be banned except in cases of when the EBS is active. These visual interruptions can be better placed during the advertising periods. This admonition especially goes for news “special reports” which are rarely of such import that they can’t wait for a more appropriate time.

Speaking of news… all news programming that is straight reporting without editorial asides will be allowed to be shown without restriction or modification. Both opinion and entertainment information shows must be shown in clearly marked blocks of programming which must be separate from the actual news block. It’s time we stop confusing news with just plain yappin’.

A Busy First Day

And with that, I’m sure I’ll have some writer’s cramp from having to sign all of these things into existance. After I have myself a bit of a rest, I’m certain that I’ll be better equipped to deal with the important problems of our time.