Bring back manufacturing, focus on consumers, and more 

[{
    "name": "Newsletter Promo",
    "id": "NewsletterPromo",
    "class": "inlineCenter",
    "insertPoint": "4",
    "component": "15264767",
    "requiredCountToDisplay": "0"
    },{
    "name": "Ad - Medium Rectangle CC01 - 300x250",
    "id": "AdMediumRectangleCC01300x250",
    "class": "inlineCenter",
    "insertPoint": "8",
    "component": "2963441",
    "requiredCountToDisplay": "12"
    },{
    "name": "Ad - Medium Rectangle LC01 - 300x250",
    "id": "AdMediumRectangleCC01300x250",
    "class": "inlineCenter",
    "insertPoint": "18",
    "component": "2963441",
    "requiredCountToDisplay": "22"
    },{
    "name": "Ad - Medium Rectangle LC09 - 300x250",
    "id": "AdMediumRectangleLC09300x250",
    "class": "inlineCenter",
    "insertPoint": "28",
    "component": "3252660",
    "requiredCountToDisplay": "32"
    }]

After extensive exposure to both major political parties, I have chosen to be an Independent. One side is socialistic, which doesn’t work, and the other wants to control personal rights. Democracy doesn’t seem to work, either. We elect those who spend the most money, and they propose new programs and ways to fund them through taxes while ignoring public opinion. They deregulate safeguards and declare war by emotions. It is hard to imagine a worse-run business.

The great strengths of this country have been manufacturing and the consumer. We have given away our manufacturing to the Chinese and have created a major recession by eliminating the controls we found to be necessary after the Great Depression.

The present government keeps searching for a way to stimulate the consumer activity while ignoring the real problems, meanwhile printing unsecured money by the trillions.

My solution is simple: Make it so expensive to manufacture outside of the United States that the jobs come home and let the consumers return to their normal activity. As the population grows and children leave to start their own lives, they become consumers. Give Social Security only to those who need it. Make receiving Medicare payments very difficult for those crooks who are stealing billions from the government. Retire farm subsidies.

Use our military to protect the country instead of fighting highly provocative wars in Muslim countries. Out of the billion Muslims, there will always be those who resent our intrusion.

9/11 was a lesson in what people who are willing to die can do.

Gays should enter into a contract that, when recorded, gives them the advantage of marriage. Drugs should be legalized and taxed, and our prisons should release the offenders, with jail terms for anyone selling or giving to minors or public abuse.