If we forced adherence to the Broadcasters Code of Ethics as we had prior to 1977 , media could return to the days of Cronkite, Brinkley, et al., when we were briefed on the days events and allowed to decide for ourselves what those events meant to us.

I am a progressive. HOWEVER, there are definitely areas where I can agree with the right. I think we need to eliminate the possibility of anchor babies. That means we would need a constitutional amendment defining who is a citizen. My thinking is that you must be born to at least one person who is a citizen already, regardless of whether the parent is citizen by birth or naturalized. And where you were physically born does not define your citizenship. (That provision would give cover to our military and diplomats as well as business folks overseas.) For anyone else, your citizenship defaults to that of your parents.

That being said...

ICE didn't exist until post-911 and we got along fine without it. I don't see any need for it now. I do not want open borders, but we need a guest worker program and we need to streamline the legal immigration process. We also need to greatly expand the court system handling asylum cases, including investigators to determine the credibility of the applicant.

No one -- I don't care what their age, race, political point of view, or level of education -- can give us an ironclad guarantee that they won't go stark raving looney-tunes at some future point, whether soon or in the distant future. It can't be predicted. Yet, you think I should trust someone to have the power to take my life away by virtue of him or her having a gun, or unlimited guns, as well as unlimited ammunition. I actually talked with a 2A supporter that told me he would rather have his daughter murdered than for her to have to live in a country where she couldn't have a gun. /O.O\  People.... that is totally insane and should be a good indication that the person I was talking to should NOT be allowed to own a firearm. ==> BUT <==... I am not willing to see our nation devolve into a war over who should or should not own a gun, regardless that no one, in my opinion, can be trusted with one. (I am, by the way a veteran and a boomer.) As the stock market brokers say "Past performance is no guarantee of future results", and that's how I feel about gun owners due to the mental health aspect. We have a group of folks who do not make daily contact with others and have no family to become concerned over their declining mental health. They can't be monitored to assess threat level. So, increased mental health measures is not the answer, either.

From the Great Depression until the 60s, the top tax rate hovered around 90%. Hardly anyone's income was taxed at that rate, though, and we had an economic boom that propelled us to THE strongest economy in the world. During those days, one person, married, could earn enough income to save for retirement, buy a home (or possibly more than one), have a new car every 3-5 years, save for their kids college education, and could afford to take a vacation with the family each year. Those who were very wealthy in those days did not end up having to close their businesses because of the tax rate, nor did their wealth decrease. In fact, the millionaires wealth grew enormously. Because of the onerous tax rate, those business owners invested in their businesses, perhaps opening new manufacturing locations with new equipment, expanded sales force and work force, and R&D departments. Consequently, their real wealth grew many multiples of times. CEOs of as recent as 1978 made only 37 times (in salary) the average worker's salary. Then, Reagan happened. CEO pay, while contributing no more than their 1930s-1970s counterparts, has skyrocketed while worker wages have regressed in comparison to those in 1978. (These figures are all available online.) In today's political climate, we have a huge wealth gap which will only get wider until we disallow all money in politics. Politicians are bought outright, in spite of the ruling by SCOTUS. As a result, not only does the wealth gap increase, but our vote counts less and less because the politician does not represent us, regardless of party. They do what their donors tell them, not what voters need or want them to do. Anyhow, I digress. Productivity has multiplied several times since 1978, but wages haven't kept pace. What has definitely increased is corporate greed, and our political system is allowing socialism for corporations while the middle and lower classes get rugged capitalism to survive on. Why should we have to subsidize people who work full-time jobs? That should be the corporation's responsibility to pay people a living wage just like our parents and grandparents enjoyed. You may say.... that will make all prices rise and make what we need to live on unaffordable. To that I say... you should be getting paid more, then you could still afford what you want and need. What we are allowing is like there being 100 cookies on the table, the rich guy grabbing 99 of them, then telling us "Hey, watch out! That guy's stealing your cookie!"

We now live in a global economy, they say. At least that's the excuse they give when sending our jobs to India, Malaysia, Brazil, Philippines, Korea and China. Then, we let them bring their goods back into the country, un-penalized, to participate in, and profit from, our economic market. That isn't a very bright strategy, if you ask me.  It can be argued that making employers pay a living wage will force them to off-shore all the jobs, but... if they're going to be allowed to participate in our economy, they should pay for that right in some fashion, especially in light of how little they pay in taxes nowadays. Slap big import taxes on them and price their products out of competition if they do that.  OUR economy is what has enabled these companies to exist. Where is their loyalty to country, if not to the workers? Unfortunately, nearly all our politicians refuse to address this problem, leaving us to wonder how long it will be before our own job is off-shored, or worse yet...

when automation will replace us. Self-driving cars and semi's will soon take over the highways. Homes are already experimentally being 3-D printed. Technology is outpacing job development and what is being done to combat this problem? Not much. The only proposals for jobs to replace the old ones are from the Green New Deal and because of climate change deny-ers and energy companies constantly slamming those job proposals as socialism, the policy package will likely never get off the ground to any significant degree, at least until it's too late.

The right confuses me. They distrust government, for the most part, yet... support a continuous increase in "defense" spending that, with the exception of Coast Guard and Customs, isn't spent on defense and they also rush to defend and support cops who are, by definition, government. Please make up your minds, folks. Be consistent. You can't say you support small government and then want increased government control in areas of our lives where government should have no say at all. (If you're a libertarian, I'm pretty sure we agree on that last point.)

We, as a nation, need to get out of the habit of calling cops for everything under the sun. They aren't equipped to correctly handle half the stuff they get called for. For that, we need on-call teams that ARE equipped to handle those calls and those calls should be routed appropriately by 911 operators. So, yeah.... to a minor extent I am a "defund" person. Some of that tax money should go toward funding those other teams. It puts less stress on police and reduces the possibility someone is going to die for no good reason. (No, I don't want to hear the b.s. argument about "they should have complied" because we have seen deaths occur when the victims fully complied.)