What if that person gets released on good behavior? That person now goes out into society and is a walking time bomb. What do others in society learn from this? They can go to prison, do some time, get free room and board, and then go out to wreak so more havoc. If a death sentence is carried out immediately, the lesson is learned by others in society that if they do something worthy of the death sentence there will be no reprieve.

Give the person a week to get his affairs in order, say goodbye to the world, and ponder his actions. Then send him off. If someone has earned the death sentence, let him have it. Use the space and money for rehabilitating other citizens.

In fact, I think that perhaps the death sentence to be given to far more criminals that it is current given to. Perhaps pedophiles and drunk drivers who kill someone while intoxicated should also be deserving of death.

What are your thoughts on this topic?

When a citizen commits a crime, they do so in trade for some of their rights. In other words, were I to kill someone, I would give up my rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness and depending on the scenario, I could lose my right to life.

This is natural cause and effect. Every action has a consequence. Certain consequences are desirable, others are not. We learn what to do and what not to do based on receiving these consequences. This is a law of the universe. It cannot be changed.


When we do try to change this law of the universe and take away consequences, we damage not only the person to whom those consequences rightly belong, but we also damage our society.

The damage to the person is that they do not learn what they were supposed to.

The damage to society is that the individual will continue to commit crimes because there is no fear of adequate negative consequence. This leads others to see a lack of negative consequence who then are more likely to commit crime as well.

What exactly the adequate consequences are for any particular crime is a topic for another discussion.

The fact that there is are not adequate negative consequences in place for many crimes is obvious by the number of citizens inhabiting prison cells. What we need is to stop thinking that citizens who commit crimes still have all their rights. They commit crime? They lose most of their rights. They commit crime, they owe a great debt to society. A criminal needs reform and they need to be able to make restitution. They need to repay their debt to society.

In other words, we need to bring back work programs to prisons. We need to rip out all the cable and satellite TV from the prisons. We need to make the food less enjoyable and more utilitarian. Nourishment is all the food should provide. College education? Why should a criminal get a college education for free when honest citizens have a hard enough time getting grants and scholarships? The education a criminal should get is through service to the community. Service and hard work is what builds character and is what is missing from society. If they do not learn it in their families or communities, prison must be the next best option for these wayward citizens.

To that end, a friend of mine had an idea. We should put prisoners to work producing electricity. Put a dynamo in every stationary bike and then hook those bikes up to the grid. Every time a prisoner pedals the bike, they produce power. Put them to work pedaling every day. Energy crisis averted!

How about roads? Prisoners used to make roads. Put them back to work making roads!

Jobs that citizens do not want to do? Let the prisoners do them.

Let us put our prisoners to work. Let them repay their debts. Let us not rob them of the valuable negative consequences for their negative actions. Put our prisoners to work! But not for money. Heavens no! Make them work for Restitution.

If negative consequences are adequate, our prisons will stop filling up. Prison used to be a punishment. These days prisons seem to be 5 Star hotels. A prisoner is released and they do whatever they need in order to get back in? Why?! Because prison is not a deterrent! It is a haven!

Please share your comments with me on this topic.

On the topic of “what happens if someone shoots a gun on a plane, even accidentally”, Mythbusters had a great episode on that actually. They pressurized a plane and shot holes through it. Nothing catastrophic. The myth was totally busted. They had to attach a major explosive to the side of the plane to actually affect some catastrophic damage.

What are your thoughts about guns on planes?

3550000000000 / 309000000 = $11,488.67/person/year

That is quite a bit of tax. Although, consider what we pay in taxes across the board in sales, property, gas, income, SS, etc, etc.

I just read some articles that I found interesting.

Tax the Rich!

“1. Poor Americans do pay taxes… including federal payroll taxes. Between gas taxes, sales taxes, utility taxes and other taxes, no one lives tax free in America.”

“[D]uring seven of the eight Bush years, the IRS report on the top 400 taxpayers was labeled a state secret, a policy that the Obama administration overturned almost immediately after his inauguration.”

“Since 1980, when President Reagan won election promising prosperity through tax cuts, the average income of the vast majority—the bottom 90 percent of Americans—has increased a meager $303, or 1 percent. Put another way, for each dollar people in the vast majority made in 1980, in 2008 their income was up to $1.01.”

Tax The Rich? 14 Facts You May Want To Consider

“The ultra-rich simply are not going to be taxed into oblivion. They will do whatever it takes to avoid high tax rates.”

“The truth is that our tax system is completely and totally broken.”

“When you crush small businesses you crush job growth in this country.

“If you wanted to truly ‘tax the rich’, you would need to completely throw out our current tax system and come up with something completely and totally different.

And actually, when you get right down to it, an income tax is not even needed to run our country. Until 1913 the United States did just fine without a federal income tax.”

“[T]he solution is to change the rules of the game so that money and financial power does not become so concentrated in the hands of just a few. Our founding fathers intended for all Americans to be able to start businesses and compete. They never intended for gigantic mega-corporations to dominate everything.”

What are your thoughts on taxes?

Initially, I was wary about the idea of pulling our troops out. But I am sure that is because I have not understood everything. The problem with forming an opinion on anything that our government is doing is there is such a great lack of understanding by so many average citizens like myself. Now that I have learned a bit more about what is going on, my opinion is that we should indeed bring our troops home.

Some may say, “What about all those poor helpless people over there that we were doing actual good for?” The American people should continue to help around the world, but privately. We do not and should not be using our Armed Forces as our philanthropic arm. We the people should be organizing ourselves and helping through private organizations. And many are doing exactly that.

The roles of our government should be small and focused on our nation. The roles of the people of the United States of America, as private citizens, should be focused on being good neighbors and lending helping hands where ever we can throughout the world.

It seems to be a “simple” matter of mistaken identity. Our government thinks it is the people. It is wrong. WE are the people and we run the nation, or at least we should. We have become complacent and self-centered. We have allowed our elected officials to take away our responsibilities as humans and citizens of Earth as well as our freedoms. It is past time for us to take back what is ours and relieve our bloated bureaucracy of our misplaced roles.

I encourage everyone to read this speech. Here are a couple of quotes from it that caught my attention:

Too often, as a result, we overlook an obvious fact: finding the right answer is impossible unless we have asked the right question.

You just think that because democracy works for you that it will work everywhere. It only works where there is a strong foundation of this particular type of religion.

Those who seek to minimize the role that religions can play on the public stage are … seeking to minimize the very institutions that have given us our civil liberties in the first place.

The full speech can be found here: “The Importance of Asking the Right Questions”

(Thanks to Marie Norris for introducing me to this speech.)

In just 18 minutes, Lessig demonstrates, in crystal clear terms, the devastating effect corporate campaign cash is having on our democracy, and in turn, our lives. Lessig makes obvious that until we as a nation take up this fundamental fight – until we strike at the root of the problem – we will continue to see our democracy crumble.

Source: “Lawrence Lessig’s new TED talk” @ Fix Congress First