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Hobie's 1996
No-Dog-Doo 3rd Party Platform
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"Saying we should keep the two-party system simply because it is working is like saying
the Titanic voyage was a success because a few people survived on life rafts." E. McCarthy

"If Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, and Ross Perot are the 3 best qualified people
in the United States to be President, something is drastically wrong." HobieDog

"The reason political party platforms are so long is
that when you straddle anything it takes a long time to explain it." W. Rogers

Hobie's No-Dog-Doo 3rd Party Platform starts with 3 important issues:
#1 TOO MUCH MONEY IN THE POLITICAL PROCESS:
"Politics has got so expensive that it takes a lot of money to even get beat with." W. Rogers There's an old saying that if you have trouble understanding something, follow the money. Present day politics involve a massive transfer of money from the government, citizens, and businesses, to the media, election consultants, and lobbyists, with three consequences:

First, the high cost of elections and lobbying undermines both public confidence in the political process, as well as common sense results (e.g. what else could explain why foreign countries and foreign citizens are allowed to lobby our government for their own interests?)

Secondly, money is increasingly raised with sophisticated appeals targeted to hot-button issues like abortion, guns, the environment, and "entitlements." The rise of single-issue organizations with highly paid staffs and lobbyists draws emotional battle lines, emphasizing differences and distrust.

And third, the intense lobbying by these organizations paralyzes politicians, putting increasing pressure on the courts to handle controversial issues.

Hobie's platform calls for real election financing reforms (including much free media time in blocks of at least 15 minutes to prevent superficial sound-bites) -- and Hobie believes something is wrong when fast-food managers can earn more money than members of Congress, and suggests we should pay our legislators far more -- with substantial deferred compensation tied to achieving national goals like balancing the budget, student achievement, etc.

#2 "ENTITLEMENT" REFORM:
"Polls show more young Americans believe in flying saucers
than believe they're going to get anything out of Social Security." E. Hudgins While present recipients consider Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to be "entitlements," the present pay-as-you-go system simply cannot last when there are only two workers for every retired baby-boomer. If changes are not made, those future workers will say they shouldn't have to pay taxes at rates of 60-80% since it wasn't their fault the system wasn't fixed -- and we baby-boomer will agree and accept sharply lower "entitlements." Recognizing that politicians have been unable to tell the public the facts much less propose change (and Clinton's demagoguery of Medicare during the last election) has recently forced economists to formulate a new fall-back plan: tax the baby-boomers as they work with an income tax, and then tax them as they spend their retirement savings and government payments with a consumption tax.... that is a national sales tax. (No, Hobie isn't making this up!)

Hobie's platform calls for the modest entitlement growth reductions and means testing needed to avert the far worse alternatives.

#3 THE EDUCATION CRISIS:
"After the post office, schools are the most unionized activity in America." L. Alexander Periodically having to "re-center" the SAT scores downward (this year by 70 points on the verbal score) -- and the results of the recent Third International Mathematics and Science Study where the top 10% American math students scored below the top 10% of students in Singapore, South Korea, Japan, England, France, Canada, Germany, and even the Russian Federation -- show something is wrong. Five years ago the Detroit News found that out of 82,000 Michigan public school teachers, only 15 had been fired over a 6 year period. Either their hiring is miraculous, or.... Certainly parent apathy and television's corrosive effect on children's attention spans has played a big part in the dumbing down of our educational system. But simply put: (1) no correlation has yet been proven between between money spent and student performance (indeed if all it took was to spend more money to produce academically superior students, no one would hesitate to do so); and (2) any system that cannot reward its best and fire its worse is bound to fail.

Hobie's No-Dog-Doo Platform calls for a school voucher system as the most feasible way to get our nation's highest priority back on track.

To maintain his status as a real politician Hobie will join all the other candidates in ignoring
the single most important issue facing us: the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

"Some of our friends are for this bill and some of our friends are against this bill.
We're here to help our friends." Michigan Legislator.

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