Again, I started this blog to talk about ADHD but I’m finding I have so much on my mind that is not ADHD, particularly things related to the shitshow the United States finds itself in these days.

And I guess in a way this is related to ADHD. If you have ADHD, you can’t just be all happy-go-lucky and do things on instinct or whim. You have to plan things out. You have to break things down into tiny, manageable steps. You have to summon the will to do them. And – really importantly – you need to figure out what you need help with, and the figure out how to get people to help you. You can’t just say an idea or describe what you want the end result to be and then magically do it.

And so in politics you have to be able to do the same thing. I think this is why I find Bernie Sanders so troubling as a candidate. He reminds me of me having a great idea, but then trying to start it, and realizing I have no idea what I’m doing, and that I am going to need help doing it. He is like a person with untreated and undiagnosed ADHD thinking he can do a group project all by himself. On the other hand, Elizabeth Warren and her plans appeal strongly to me – she actually has the step by step processes thought out, and she is so good at getting buy-in from others.

Obviously the way the federal government is handling COVID-19 is a mess.

I saw somewhere that Korea had developed a 7-minute test, which is freaking amazing. And they were ready to start mass-producing those tests.

My thought is that we just need to do mass testing. Maybe do it in conjunction with the census. If we were able to figure out who has COVID-19 and who doesn’t, we actually WOULD be able to get through this in a matter of months. Because everyone who has it can then isolate, those without it but who has been in contact with someone who tested positive can quarantine for two weeks.

But I want to think about more long term policy issues. I am appalled at how the current administration has just refused to adhere to what had been norms – releasing tax returns, for example. Or the way McConnell is just sitting on bills in the Senate without voting on them. Or how he blocked President Obama’s last Supreme Court nomination.

Those norms need to be legislated into laws. It needs to be a law that presidential candidates release their tax returns going back X number of years. If the candidate does not release them, they are disqualified from being president, period. Disqualified, the same as if they were under 35 or not a citizen. There also needs to be a law that the President, or anyone who holds elective office, can’t own any stocks or companies or any property that can cause a conflict of interest. I think a blind trust doesn’t go far enough.

I was thinking the other day about limiting the amount of wealth that people who hold political office can have. I thought they should be able to own one residence, worth the median home price in their jurisdiction or district, plus a certain amount of money that could only be in T-bills or other non-controversial investments, an amount that would be enough to buy an annuity that would pay them 3 times the amount of a mortgage on their median-priced home., and that they would have to GIVE THE REST OF THEIR MONEY AWAY. Either to a charity or to the US Treasury. Don’t like it? You can’t run for office.

Campaign finance reform. This really needs to be a thing. Campaigns need to be publicly funded and there needs to be caps on how much you can spend.

There needs to be a law that once one house of Congress has passed a bill, the other body MUST act on it within a certain period of time. This needs to be enforced by holding the body’s leader in contempt and putting them in jail. Then the body will need to elect a backup leader and that person will need to immediately bring the legislation to that body, or else they will go to jail too. I mean – there needs to be serious consequences for this. Maybe that person holding back the legislation should just be removed from office instead of being put in jail.

Taxation. Ok, trickle down economics DOES NOT WORK. What works is taxing corporations and capital gains at VERY high rates. What this does is it encourages businesses to invest their earnings into the business rather than squirrel it away in offshore numbered accounts. That leads to more productivity, cheaper products, and higher wages! And higher wages result in more people buying more stuff! and that stimulates the economy!

And here’s another thing: Labor. All the stuff that labor unions negotiate into their contracts to protect the workers should be made into law, so that we wouldn’t NEED labor unions.

Last thing for today: All employers should be required to publicly disclose the salaries of all their employees. This would go a LONG way to reduce the pay disparity between white men and everyone else. This whole stupid custom about people keeping their wages and salaries secret just helps employers undercut the salaries of people who don’t know any better, because EVERYONE’S SALARY IS A BIG SECRET.