So now it’s 2007.
May it be a much more blessed 365 days for all than the last go-around.
It’s never too early so here’s my 2007 holiday wish list, what I want to experience come the conclusion of this year:
FIX HEALTH CARE
Who will form the Capitol coalition that can break the stranglehold insurance companies have on American health care? More appropriately, who will show the political bravery to take on this insidious behemoth? Who will hold nationally televised hearings, calling on the CEOs of the healthcare giants to testify about the degree of their corporate profits, about the salaries, bonuses and stock options that the corporate officers award themselves and about what can be done to reduce the out-of-control share of the gross national product that healthcare costs rob this nation while millions of American citizens lack even basic care? The first-world cost of our present healthcare system is producing third-world benefits. At the very least, start with appointing an Iraq Study group type of commission to handle this political hot potato but staff it with experts from across the spectrum–not D.C. insiders, not millionaires and not corporate board sitters.
LEVEL THE ECONOMIC PLAYING FIELD
A completely different economic paradigm is needed because more and more jobs being performed in this country are going to be sent overseas, mostly by American corporations, as an expense saver. The reasoning will be that ‘we have to stay competitive’ and such. No, I am not simply advocating instituting enormous economic tariffs and building Fortress America.
However, the Tom Friedman’s of this world keep envisioning and offering that trade between nations will balance itself out and that this country will maintain its economic edge because America is the wellspring of creativity and this will induce a continued prosperity benefitting all America. While the Friedman-ites rightly argue that far greater attention and funding needs to be focused on math, science, research facilities, etc., what the Friedman-ites fail to acknowledge is that the staffing–not the management–for The Next Great Idea(s) could also easily be out-sourced, thereby simply continuing the current modus operandi.
Globalization is diminishing middle America and support for the NAFTA and CAFTA-type agreements is greasing this slippery side. These agreements boost corporate profits but at the expense of average Americans. Any new proposals at a minimum need to counter this by demanding inclusion of certain pay levels, unionization options, no continued or increased degration of the environmental and such. That’s at least a start towards fairness. As an aside, just how has NAFTA benefitted non-corporate entities? Wasn’t NAFTA designed to assist with much of Mexico’s economic impoverishment and diminish the desperate need for illegal immigration?
REDUCE THE PURCHASING OF POLITICAL INFLUENCE
Government-funded elections (I prefer to call it people-funded), locally to nationally, is a necessity to take back our republic. Anyone who provides campaign funds does so with the implicit agreement that a candidate will back the interests of such funders. Those who plow thousands of dollars into the campaign coffers of Candidate X obviously have a greater pull in determining what legislation a candidate will propose or back. A politician voting his or her conscience faces the very real threat of contributions being shifted to an election opponent–this is an ominous and valid, belief-bending reality. Such is a badly needed reform of the status quo but one that will always be fought tooth-and-nail by 99% of all incumbents and any of the powerful/wealthy.
ALLOW GOVERNMENT TO WORK
One of the tremendously under-reported aspects of the current national administration and its flunkies in Congress and elsewhere is how can those who don’t believe in government govern? This conundrum is akin to having atheists devoutly preach the Bible or the Koran.
The resulting evidence surrounds us as does the smell. The aftermath of Hurrican Katrina is a sordid but shining example. The threatening and silencing of various inspector generals, running the spectrum of government from the Pentagon, to legal aid, to health care/Medicare, to the Iraq inspector general are classic actions featuring the archetype-in-action of those currently in power. The overt yet pitiful lack-of-oversight-of-anything effort by the Republican Congress and the non-coverage of this by the media is the nadir of this belief.
To them, government is simply an unwarranted interference. To insure that this negativity blossoms into a cultural meme, the purveyors of this thinking create and feed its manifestation. Always adorned with an angelic white collar, tie and subdued suit jacket, they rob and plunder for personal benefit and allow cronies to get their cut of the action–all the while providing sustenance and amen-ing the holier-than-no-ones who provide op-ed column upon pixelized presenation upon digitalized appearance and pulpit shit-fest that government is the problem.
One ultimate in terrorism is those who wish to rid this country of government assuming the positions of power to do just that. And not having the courage of their so-called convictions to trumpet their philosophy and efforts during the process.
OPEN OUR GOVERNMENT TO US
Granted, there will always be some government ‘secrets’ that cannot and should not be made public but the current administration has taken untrustworthiness to an extent never before experienced. From Dick Cheney’s early-on gathering of energy exectutives to dictate and put into place government policy, to the administration’s silly but consequential uber-redaction efforts, to President Bush’s maniacal claims along the lines of what he had for breakfast must be kept in the dark or the terrorists will benefit–it’s all there in its un-glory.
STOP PLAYING TO THE BASE
No, this is not trying to earn 50% plus one of the votes in an election. No, this pertains to concentrated political efforts to bring out the worst in people, to rile the populace using imaginary villains and targets. This is how Karl Rove has lived his professional political life and sadly but tellingly, gained a reputation as a genuis in doing so (I guess up until November, 2006 that is). The scum are not the recipients of the abuse but those who employ such tactics. Whether it be Ronald Reagan’s imaginary stories of ‘Cadillac-driving welfare queens,’ Bush 41’s derogatory ‘Willie Horton racial efforts’ to Bush 43’s ‘do as I command or the bad guys kill get you and slaughter your children’ proclamations, it all must end. I believe it will in 2008, at least presidentially, as the American populace is weary of such bombastic negativity.
I guess the above makes me some sort of flaming, wacky, leftist liberal. All the while I thought this was what normal is.
