Political Changes

To make the world fit my ideal situation, i requested some political changes from my goddess. Then, i used our political support and knowledge of the future to leverage specific changes to lower political impact and risk.

In 1981, the first change i requested from my goddess was to eliminate the Eisenhower changes to the separation of Church and State. Then i asked for a cell phone cheat with untraceable email addresses to assist in our information requests. Then i tipped off the Democrats about the Religious Wrong's attempt to hijack the Republican party.

In 1982, to provide the political capital to gain the federal government's support for our initiatives, i began to give annual lists of known sexual and violent criminals annually. i also forwarded all the available information about forensics. i also encouraged making all the evidence for violent and sexual crimes linked to a national databank to later incorporate into a database.

Then, i recommended that the gas tax be indexed to inflation as a bare minimum and that there be a ban on earmarks for transportation bills. Instead, we encouraged representatives and senators to direct the states to regulate the formulas determining the discretionary funding utilization of motor fuel taxes. i also urged states to move most new infrastructure to use tolls as the primary form of financing.

The final change i recommended for 1982 was a restriction on the Reagan tax breaks so that the taxes are NOT cut on money that leaves the U.S. This would help prevent the issue where companies export their profits from the U.S. to save money.

In 1983, i messaged the Democrats about Reagan's SDI (Star Wars program). i encouraged them to cooperate with publicly supporting it before negotiating with Republicans to not fund it privately. This helped further weaken the USSR's finances while not weakening our finances.

We also pushed for the nationalization of tracks, with rail companies paying tolls for track usage. Our plans had the federal government allow state controls over the tracks, and we encouraged them to create bonds for each priority, to be recycled back by the tolls charged. Since the nation owns the tracks, the FRA can prevent the excessive labor cuts that the rail companies began to push for. This freed up the funds to move to support multi-modal transportation to prioritize sea and rail transportation for long distances and allow trucking to be used for first- and last-mile transportation.

We also encouraged states to create revolving annual bonds to fund maintenance, heavy rail (to eventual 286,000 pound standards used), grade separation, and double tracking of all of the possible rail lines and grade separation in this priority order for each line, all with a priority on the most used lines first. These bonds are repaid by tolls charged on the rail lines. We also had Congress mandate that abandoned rail lines be returned to state control for transportation, utility, and trail and rail purposes. They would have done that in 5 more years regardless.

In 1984, during the presidential elections, we targeted Reagan for his loose grasp on reality, high unemployment, and inflation, the Iran hostage situation, his desire to bow to religious influences, and his war on "drugs" (lower classes) to benefit rebellions in other countries. However, since there were no real candidates against him, we supported Bush since career politicians in this life have not been polarized against the process of compromising for the greater American good.

The nationalization of tracks was approved. The companies that owned the tracks got toll credits for their tracks. The toll's first financial initiative was to be used for track maintenance and standardizing non-standard tracks when possible (sometimes terrain is the limiting factor). This will help the FRA simplify its monitoring of tracks and railroad equipment. The state control of the abandoned rail lines is already starting to decrease the cost of the new uses of the rail banks. Instead of purchasing the land for market prices, agencies only have to repay the money spent by the state to maintain the lines.

Then, we pushed for the removal of abandoned dams. Republicans can advocate their 1-time removal cost as a saving over maintaining abandoned structures and the resulting restoration towards better fishing. The democrats can also support it as environment stewardship, allowing the fish and other animals to reclaim their historical habitats and pair it with flood management by planning wetlands along rivers and streams. Congress can propose fund matching for state and local governments and support based on the metric's cost-effectiveness.

In 1985, Reagan lost the Republican primary over the issues that we brought up and the attempts to break the separation of Church and State. With Bush being a career politician, he should be able to work with the Democratic Congress to find reasonable compromises to benefit us all.

The dam initiatives are being implemented very slowly and based chiefly on cost-effectiveness. We will encourage environmental groups to make a cost-match to take out more abandoned dams in the future. Then, we pushed for the creation of regional toll agencies and their regulations to be utilized for most new highway lanes, with tolling being removed from lanes when they are paid back. We have already linked the gas tax to inflation, so it should be enough for most of the maintenance of lanes and the interchanges and grade separations needed for a smoother traffic flow. We also pushed Congress to make waitresses make at least minimum wage.

In 1986, we pushed to close Chernobyl before April then it was collectively rehabbed to put it back into action. We also delayed the Challenger launch to spring. Using the warmer weather and better inspections, we could avoid the explosion this time. Still, we warned that it could happen soon if we don't limit launches to only suitable temperatures and with complete inspections. We also sent the information about Mad Cow disease to England so they can take care of it sooner and not affect as many people/finances as in the original world. We then advised Bush that he could push the USSR towards mutual disarmament to end the Cold War.

We also pushed for "sin" taxes on cigarettes and alcohol. In the areas that have approved gambling, drugs, and prostitution, we have taxes applied to those things as well. As a libertarian, i want all of these things to be legal. As someone who leans towards democracy, i also recognize that those things are not healthy for us, and we need to prepare as a society for the fallout that comes from addiction and related diseases. Legalizing all of these things makes it easier to regulate our vices and better ensure the safety of the general (majority of the) American public.

Then we pushed Congress towards a "sane regulation of guns" requiring all guns to be registered with local police departments (to populate a federal database as well), made the gun owners responsible for securing the weapons (especially from kids and mentally ill people); and finally requiring a mental health check as a requirement for owning semi and automatic weapons. On the other hand, we had no resistance towards ballot measures on open/concealed carry. While this doesn't impact typical domestic gun violence issues, it does limit the number of mass shootings in the future.

We then increased legislation against blue culture. We made cops not reporting unnecessary police violence to be considered accomplices to that violence and limited governmental immunity to only self-reported issues. Persistent shielding of criminal police is now upgraded to progressively worse crimes. This won't make much impact before phone cams and body cameras. Still, it will create the foundation to leverage better results in the future.

In 1987, we pushed for education reforms on homework and contact in sports, including banning helmet-helmet contact due to it causing concussions.

We then supported expansions on the child labor laws, especially in the entertainment industry, both domestically and globally. Domestically, we tried to ensure parents were not using their children to profit. We did that by forcing most of the amount over the average wage into trusts for the kids. Internationally, the focus was on minimum wages and additional fees per performance (if the person isn't credited for songwriting). We will also need to support child support limits for partners who were never married or lived together. We will push for the maximum child support to be locked into the average American wage after paternity is proven. Speaking of minimum wage, we should also get that indexed to inflation. i then forwarded the "Tear Down the Wall" speech to Bush to make.

Minimum wages:

1981-$3.35 / hour Increased to 4.19 from the inflation since 1981$4.36 in 1988, 4.57 in 1989, $4.82 in 1990 (increase of 1.02/hour), 5.02 in 1991 (increase of 0.77/hour), $5.17 in 1992, $5.33 in 1993, $5.46 in 1994, $5.62 in 1995, $5.78 in 1996 (increase of 1.03/hour), $5.92 in 1997 (increase of .77/hour), $6.01 in 1998, $6.14 in 1999, $6.35 in 2000, $6.52 in 2001, $6.63 in 2002, $6.78 in 2003, $6.96 in 2004, $7.20 in 2005, $7.43 in 2006, $7.64 in 2007 (increase of 1.79/hour), $7.93 in 2008 (increase of 1.38/hour), $7.91 in 2009 (increase of .66/hour), $8.04 in 2010, $8.29 in 2011, $8.46 in 2012, $8.59 in 2013, $8.72 in 2014, $8.73 in 2015, $8.85 in 2016, $9.03 in 2017, $9.25 in 2018, $9.42 in 2019, $9.54 in 2020, $9.99 in 2021, $10.79 in 2022, $11.27 in 2023

In 1989, we pushed Bush into ramping up regulatory oversight to limit the bailout.

In 1990, we pushed the laws about the entertainment industries in the U.S., Japan, and South Korea to require minimum weights determined by doctors per body height and size combinations. This will combat the gradual issue of girls being sickly skinny in everyday life, as well as the unhealthy diets of idols being restricted to the point of health issues. We've already recommended that Bush push for total replacement of Iraq's government after they gave us the Kuwait attempt at further genocide to excuse our involvement. We could have used their genocide against Iran as well. Still, our involvement in Iran was already pretty murky due to Reagan's actions.

In 1991, we cautioned Japan about the nuclear water leak in February. We also had Democrats oppose Clarence Thomas for the Supreme Court for sexual harassment and questionable ethics. We then pushed Bush to institute initiatives to covertly fight the Taliban in Afghanistan and publicly increase infrastructure funding for Afghanistan to counter the damage left by Reagan's empty promises.

In 1992, Bill Clinton still won the election, and Bush still passed NAFTA, which caused some issues for the manufacturers, especially in the Midwest. To battle those impacts, we pushed for inland ports with warehouses, assembly, and prep services where possible in each state. We also encouraged the Made in America initiatives as the quality alternatives for the market to determine winners in each industry. Our future projects will also battle against some of these lost jobs in these industries.

In 1993, we pushed the FBI to avoid the standoff in Waco. They ambushed the Davidians away from the compound and then rescued the children that way instead. We also warned against the fundamentalists bombing the World Trade Center and bombings in India and London. We also warned Russia about the Tomask 7 accident.

We also pushed the electric power plants to be required to implement available environmental upgrades as soon as they can afford them. This prevented their tendency to delay upgrades to capitalize on delaying upgrades for future "carbon credits." We also pushed for funding for carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration technology research. We forwarded the available research on these technologies that i could find. We also advocated permaculture and silvopasture techniques in the mainstream agriculture reforms.

We have already pushed the governments to require the labels and agencies to pay their artists at least minimum wages for performances and moved the weight goal post to a healthy weight. We also got their support for our housing and employment schemes, equating to a third-party regulation of their entertainment industries. Our agency and label attempt to prevent the abuse suffered by the artists.

In 1994, we prevented the attack on Nancy Kerrigan to prevent. We also advised Bill Clinton on ways to avoid technically lying about his infidelity and make sure that Monica doesn't keep evidence about it. We also pushed Clinton and NATO to monitor Rwanda and Bosnia for involvement when the wars cross the line into war crimes and genocide. A nonviolent world isn't possible in this life. Still, we can at least prevent the greatest atrocities.

We also helped South Korea prevent the failure of the Seongsu Suspension Bridge in Seoul. Also, the Estonian Ferry Estonia was rehabbed to avoid its sinking. The Italians also prevented their cruise ship Achille Lauro from failing and catching fire close to Somalia.

In 1995, we made sure that the FBI prevented the OK City bombing and Selena's murder (by getting her murderer arrested for fraud instead). Then the U.N. intervened in the Bosnian civil war sooner, so the Baltic peace agreement happened; and interfered to prevent the Rwanda massacre. We also warned Japan about the earthquake and Sarin attack. We then warned the U.K. about Nick Leeson's risky trading, the predicted riots in Brixton, and the Montserrat Volcanic eruption. We also warned about the poor sanitation in Zaire, leading to an epidemic.

To combat the "teach to the test" issue, we pushed through a "progress" education system that will test your knowledge annually and is the only way to pass you out of required classes. We will advocate having students progress through as many significant subjects as possible and link the grades to possible college credits. On the other hand, we will not push students to go to college. Instead, we will make college classes needed for their intended profession (more for community college). When the students are outside the primary professions, we will push internships and apprenticeships instead, since those paths are cheaper and more beneficial for most jobs.

We also pushed a limited "free healthcare" agenda to Clinton to sponsor free birth control and STD checks. We couched it to Republicans as the most acceptable version of abortion prevention. We will also request that abortion-free locations of Planned Parenthood be built close to high schools (and some by middle schools when no high school is close). Since 7th-10th grades tend to be the most sexually promiscuous times for most people of my generation.

In 1996, there was an incredible amount of violence and hatred, so we gave the projections for these acts: the bombing on the Paris Subway, the IRA planting a bomb in the Docklands area of London, exploding a bomb on June 15th in the Arndale shopping centre in Manchester; a bomb being detonated at a U.S. military housing complex in Saudi Arabia; 30 Black churches in Mississippi being burned over 18 months; Gunman "Martin Bryant" shooting in the tourist town of Port Arthur, Tasmania on April 28th; Israel's air strikes on Hezbollah targets in Beirut; the Nail Bomb exploding on July 27th in Centennial Olympic Park, Atlanta; and gunmen killing 17 Greek Tourists outside the Europa Hotel in Cairo; Peruvian guerrillas taking people hostage at the official residence of Japan's ambassador to Peru in Lima.

Later this year, we pushed Congress into approving FDR's proposal for the Supreme Court. This legislation allowed a new justice to be added to the court—for up to 15 members—for every justice over 70 who opted not to retire. In exchange, presidents must maintain the political balance of parties in the Supreme Court, with independents being the tie-breaking vote.

This change led to a watershed in progressive attitudes in the Supreme Court. This led to more protections sooner for the LGBTQIA+ community. This also protected the right to assisted suicide, which also led to a decrease in violent crimes leading to suicide by cop. For criminal execution, the method of execution is available for selection by the criminal, with states being able to determine which methods are available in that state. Sentences for violent crimes are not restricted by age or not leading to murder in this world. Warrants are required to search cell phones or their records (earlier than originally).

Since the war on drugs didn't happen in this life, drug laws have started to slowly be struck down, requiring each state to implement methods to control the sales and taxation of each drug as it is legalized. Weed was legalized this year, with profits aiming toward addiction treatment, education, and medical benefits. These laws also prohibit schools from testing students for drugs, which leads to increased participation in all sports and extracurricular activities.

State limitations against gambling do not apply to the right of Natives to host gambling on their land in any state. This allows major metropolitan areas to sponsor Natives to own and run casinos and racetracks in or near cities. Natives also are not prohibited from subsistence hunting in state or federal parks (not including near buildings or close to other people). They also control the legal enforcement of laws on their lands. They may enforce, allow, or prohibit enforcement of laws on their lands, including non-Natives on their land. They are, however, required to support the arrest of violent criminals.

We also pushed Congress to define eligibility for the Senate and Presidential roles better. New members of the Senate must have served a term in the House of Representatives, and Presidents must have served as either a Governor of a state or a Senator or Vice-President. This will prevent some obstructionist elements from being in the more important government roles. (preventing Trump and delaying Obama's term)

We also pushed for the spouses of public figures to be allowed to deny the prosecution and publicizing of their partner's infidelity. This is acknowledged as a right to privacy (from the public, not privacy from your spouse) since you could always have an agreement with your spouse that you do not provide sexual activities, so you allow them to have sexual activities with others. This will prevent more Monica-type issues for public figures, especially when it seems like spouses like Hillary are not in a sexual relationship with their spouse but instead are in parental and financial commitments with political love.

In 1997, the Supreme Court ruled against gender specifications to dress codes but reaffirmed the rights to create and maintain dress codes. The opinion stated that dress codes could address safety concerns but could not restrict free speech and gender-divergence. Congress then replaced the former "war on drugs" with a "war on sexual abuse." They also created a national database for sexual offenders and included all forensic data in the national database. This crackdown will direct police to enforce these more critical issues. This led to a lot of frat boys and drunks getting charged with molestation and attempted rape while also putting away a lot of serial offenders and pedophiles.

Congress also continued down the path of legalizing and regulating vices. This year was the legalization of brothels (independent prostitution outside of brothels is still illegal). This allowed for total regulation of both the prostitutes and the customers. Both were required to maintain monthly checkups for STDs/STIs, with customers only being allowed to have sex with condoms and with prostitutes who had the same known issues.

In 1998, conservatives complained about the possibility of legalizing vices leading to more crime. Research from my original life shows that while addiction could lead to crime, keeping vices illegal leads to gangs and cartels. We proposed that income levels could be used to declare supposed amounts of "disposable income" and require the brothels, casinos, and drug dispensaries to register any income spent (not the item/s purchased) with an online database that users do not exceed the allowed amount of disposable income.

With the popularization of the internet, we also have issues caused by the anonymous nature of interactions. To combat this, we suggested linking internet providers and services to legal users. To do this, users must provide their driver's license or identification card information through scanners or webcams to be verified by the internet provider. Children must have their parents create and verify their accounts (with more limitations and monitoring). This won't do anything about the dark web in the future, but it should help law enforcement combat predators, bullies, and hate speech.

This naturally leads to privacy concerns from law enforcement and other users. We suggest that internet and service providers require law enforcement to provide subpoenas before providing any information to the police. We will also need to ban them from selling user information. This should prevent Facebook and similar companies from causing Brexit and would also have stopped Trump's manipulation of voters in my original life. Google will still profit from linking their users directly to the ads relevant to them. We also suggest that services should be banned from displaying private information (name, photo, birthday, etc) without the user's permission. This will prevent my issues with Facebook. (i never had an issue with companies having my information and using it, but as an introvert, i'm not trying to give open access to people i don't know/remember to contact me.)

To prevent 9/11, we are forwarding the airplane and airport upgrades that happened after the tragedy. We recommend the government to quietly require and/or fund the airplane upgrades and mandate that they be installed on all planes before 2000. Then, we recommend that the hidden airport upgrades be finished before 9/11 and the security updates suddenly be implemented on 9/11. We also forward the recommendations for marshals on the originally targeted planes. We also recommended that D/FW's airport Terminal D and SkyLink light rail be expedited to finish during 2000.

Since i'm supporting both Google and YouTube in this life, i will propose more amendments to copyrights. This time, i will submit that copyright holders are entitled to be paid based on the percentage of use and profitability of the product. This means the copyright holder can only create a claim if the profit for each usage exceeds some minimum basis (proposed cost of production + minimum cost of taking the claim to court). The amount the copyright holder will be allowed to claim will be based on the use percentage. Suppose a 3-minute song is played once in a 30-minute reaction. In that case, the reactor can keep 90% of the subscription and advertisement fees associated with that video. This will push YouTube to require reactors to list copyrighted material as co-creators and estimate their usage. The only copyright claims that will exist will be copyright blocks caused by not listing the co-creators and copyright claims on incorrect fund distributions (that will have to be reviewed and adjusted due to the claims.)

In 1999, we again had to focus on police power corruption. First, we proposed and passed laws to require cops to make informed stops and arrests. This limited unprovoked violence towards and from cops. Second, we proposed and passed laws to record investigations that are started, even if the cop involved resigns in an attempt to evade responsibility. This may force cops to accept their behaviors being investigated and their just punishments, or in some cases will further identify police organizations for criminal behavior for the FBI to investigate. With the legalization of drugs, we have also removed the right for cops to rob people under the civil asset forfeiture process.

We also pushed the next phase of our school reforms through schools during summer vacation. This starts with elementary schools focusing more on physical education, including stretching and yoga before teaching foundational basics of sports. This will help students know what to practice if they dream of going pro in any given sport. Middle schools will attempt to find and encourage kids to pursue their natural talents and/or work harder to pursue their passions. While we're not attempting a full Montessori method, we will attempt to implement some of their ideas into modern schools.

For high schools, we forced the complete abandonment of rote learning. Instead, we allowed the commercialization of Barcharts and other study guides to be used during tests. We also allowed the better students to have and use their notes and books for the same purpose. This will help students better adapt to the reality of working. It's more important that you can solve new problems than already know the known answers.

For colleges, we have forced them to offer supplemental classes to technical schools and apprenticeship training. This will keep community colleges active but lower the number of people attending universities. Athletes and students aiming for the major professions, like Law, medicine, and STEM, will be the remaining student body on these campuses. You may still have the party crowd waste a semester or two of their parent's money, but most lower to middle-class students won't attempt universities now. This will help combat the rising costs of college by lowering demand. Athletes will not have to pay for their college experience since they will at least be fully covered by their scholarships and possibly get paid for any merchandise that sells their likeness. As a bonus, the party girls getting pregnant from both athletes and STEM professionals will lead to an improved gene pool for future generations.

We also pushed Congress to encourage some environmental causes. To reduce environmental impacts they mandated (about 5 years early) that any new or renovated buildings use energy efficient appliances, fixtures, higher R value insulation, and water retention and/or reuse. Then they set an annual requirement to retrofit solar panels starting with federal agencies this year, state agencies next year, commercial buildings in 2001, and residential buildings in 2002. All of these are programmed for partial rebates for up to 30% of their cost on the taxes. All of which will push the innovation in the research and production in conservation. 

In 2000, since Hillary Clinton had always planned to run for President, she was elected to the House of Representatives first before she got her Senate position. The first change that electing John McCain accomplished was turning his original attempt at banning "soft money" in election campaigns into political campaigns being completely funded by the government office that the candidate was running for.

After that, he changed George Bush's tax cuts into tax code reform to simplify and slowly lower itself every year that the government runs a surplus (like it did during Bill Clinton's term as President). This code will reduce taxes for small businesses and filers under the poverty line by 2% and by 1% for all other money not leaving the country. He also provided limits on profits by HMOs that trigger rate reduction requirements when those limits are exceeded.

Then, he worked on immigration reform. This made anyone born in the US an automatic citizen and simplified the process of turning guest workers into citizens. Still, it did not approve citizenship for long-term illegal aliens. To address the business need for cheap workers, more guest visas were utilized, and the rate of immigration approval was massively increased. This increased the available workforce and helped raise wages above the minimum wage since the number of illegal aliens is slowly being lowered. The illegal aliens did manage to bypass the "back of the line" requirement by paying corrupt officials in Mexico to move them to the "front" of the immigration line. Our government chose to ignore this loophole.

However, they also massively increased their investigations into candidates to prevent criminals from being legalized and attached a provision to revoke citizenship on first-generation immigrants if they are convicted of any violent crimes. In exchange, the Republicans who wanted more border enforcement got the original regulations and wall segments approved, and states could be reimbursed for the deportation of illegal immigrants. We also got the original crackdown on human trafficking and smuggling approved as well. 

He also initiated the future normalization of relations with Cuba. Then, he modified the defense contracts using the same process as our transportation infrastructure improvements. This mandates that funds be approved for the departments to utilize to the best-desired effect instead of earmarking for specific locations even if the funding is not requested.

During this year, the Supreme Court made some landmark cases regarding civil rights. First, they overturned the University of California Regents v. Bakke (1978) to state that race, gender, religion, or sexual preference can not factor in approving or denying admission to any public school. Gender and religious discrimination is allowed at gender or religious-specific private schools but is not allowed at general private schools. Thereby ending "affirmative action".

Since Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), a "constitutional ban" on homosexuality never happened in this world, possibly because the separation of Church and State prevented the Religious Wrong from taking control. Therefore, gay marriage also wasn't prevented either. Religious freedoms weren't contested because the Eisenhower and Reagan changes didn't happen. This prevented religions from changing money, the pledge of allegiance, and public places to acknowledge one religion over the others. Religious declarations at school were also limited to voluntary gatherings of only students to lead other students outside of the classroom. So Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe (2000) also never happened in this world. 

Our company also pushed Congress for some new regulations as well. The first regulation was to create symbols for dietary restrictions. Our foods avoid pork, but we will also consult with relevant authorities to correctly label our foods. With our company setting the example, other companies began to label their products even before the regulations started to be enforced. This was mainly for my convenience and to express my frustration. It took far too long to find out that one of the few publicly available toothpastes that isn't made from pork fat in their gelatin is Sensodyne or Aquafresh.

Another regulation involves standardizing packaging to make items easier to ship. This will significantly aid the development of Internet commerce and make shipping and receiving jobs easier. i spent over 5 years in that role in my original life. These regulations move most packages to weigh 25 lbs (11.3398 kg) or less, with anything over 50 lbs (22.6796) being labeled as "team lifts." Item packaging is also encouraged to be square if possible. The suggested limits include fitting in a 24-inch squared (60.96 cm squared) bag.

The final regulations were related to scanning products since i spent most of my adult life in my original life working in jobs that had some use of scanners. First, the regulations would force the labeling to orient in more manageable ways to scan. For example, bottles would turn the UPC sideways so that the curve of the bottle doesn't interfere with the scanning process, etc. The final regulation would move non-grocery items towards the X00 (vendor-specific identifier) and B00 (item or parent identifier), requiring vendors to comply within the next 5 years.