Since I’m sure my blog posts have caught the attention of our national leaders and made them aware of my vast knowledge of the issues we face as a nation, I’ve decided to go ahead now and share the advice I know they must be hungering for so desperately, to wit …
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell
Get rid of the filibuster already! You’ll catch a lot of flack initially, but the blistering speed with which you will be able to get great things done will ultimately be what you, Speaker Ryan, others in party leadership, and President Trump and his administration will be remembered for decades from now. A decade from now, nobody is going to remember whether you were faithful to a politician-promulgated rule that has long since outlived its usefulness. All people will remember is what got done, and nobody will care if it was with 51 votes in the Senate or 60. The people have given Republicans everything they need to produce what they were elected to do — so do it! [See Out With The Filibuster! for more depth into my rationale here, and why the argument that eliminating the filibuster is something Republicans might regret in the future isn’t valid in this century].
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan
Encourage Senator McConnell to get rid of the filibuster in the Senate, and then work with him and President Trump to clarify and solidify a more specific agenda — and get on with it! In terms of personal knowledge of the issues we face, particularly financial ruin if we don’t get ourselves onto a more stable fiscal path, I believe you are one of the sharpest knives in the Legislative drawer. Your ability to lead effectively, however, is yet to be determined. You could take great strides in demonstrating your leadership ability by leveraging Senator McConnell’s political “savvy”, and listening more receptively to ideas of other “sharp knives in the drawer” [in both the House and the Senate — e.g., Senators Paul and Cruz, and Congressmen Meadows and Jordan just as a few examples]
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer
Come to grips with the simple fact that the ACA [Obamacare] in its current form is failing, and is literally collapsing at an accelerating pace. When that happens, the same number of people [or even more] that you keep saying will lose their coverage under the Republican replacement plan will do so anyway. If you’re as concerned about “the people” as you say you are, getting a workable healthcare system in place would be your goal, and working with Republicans — even with the President that you despise so much — would make a lot of sense. Democrats carefully [and wisely] avoided touting the ACA in the 2016 campaign because it was an albatross and Republicans were campaigning successfully on repeal and replace. They won and you lost. Get over it, and start focusing on what’s best for America instead of trying so hard to avoid “repeal” terminology! And then, who knows? That could broaden your horizons of thought on other issues that our leadership needs to address — immigration, true tax reform, long-term fiscal stability, etc.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi
Ditto the above advice to Senator Schumer, plus this. … Step down as Minority Leader! In your early years in that role you did quite well, but even some of your own party members see that it’s time for new leadership and are reluctant to express openly any evidence of their support for you going forward. Your apparent determination to double down and prove your detractors wrong is kind of like a Confederate soldier’s descendant saying “Save your Confederate money, boys; the South shall rise again!”. It’s time to do what is best for your party. Step down as Minority Leader — heck, just resign from the House and go enjoy the California beaches. And, if the lush rest-of-life retirement stipend and Rolls-Royce-level health insurance your championing of the “middle class” has earned you are not sufficient to support whatever lifestyle you want, you can take tiny little dips into your top 0.1% [as Bernie Sanders would say] $200 million net worth to fill in the gaps! [Yes, I did the math: even if you earned as little as 4% on your investments and lived to be 100, you could spend about a million dollars per month and still leave each of your five children $20 million — leaving each of them still in Bernie’s “top 0.1%”]
And Of Course, President Trump
Don’t quit tweeting— just be smarter about your tweets and quit shooting yourself in the foot with them. The concept of a President of the United States using Social Media [Twitter and FaceBook, particularly] to communicate directly with the American people is a good thing, and could be thought of as a modern-day, technology-facilitated version of FDR’s “fireside chats”. Using that medium does accomplish what I believe is your goal in using it — to communicate your thoughts on various issues directly to our citizenry, unfiltered by the speculations, embellishments and interpretations of so-called “journalists”. A modicum of “filtering” and editing, though, by advisors you trust implicitly, would serve the double purpose of achieving that goal and avoiding embarrassing missteps.
…
Well, there you have it. Follow this advice and everything will work out just fine. This advice has been provided as a public service, with no expectation of remuneration. My reward will be the satisfaction of seeing my country get off the current path toward fiscal insolvency and moral decline and onto a path that is fiscally sustainable and [hopefully] morally more consistent with the worldview of our founders.
Thanks.
Charles M. Jones
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