Too often, the left reacts rather than envisioning and laying big plans. The other day, I was sitting at a dinner at scientific meeting, with a young man getting ready to go to grad school. I asked him what his career would look like if it was wildly successful. He didn't have a clue. We need to envision our dreams, our wildest hopes of what great success would look like. If we don't we aim too low.
The recent health care reform effort started out with a very low starting goal. That was a huge error. This list is more ambitious, the way we should be thinking and striving for.
Here are some "dusty corners" that need freshening up.
Put all unemployed workers and their families on medicare. They shouldn't go through medical care hell because politicians screwed up the economy by deregulating the financial industry and our helping these economic victims, we shouldn't be adding to private insurer profits.
End Unemployment. Give ten million unemployed people jobs. We've spent literally trillions on rescuing too big to fail banks. Put six or eight or ten million people to work. Pay them $20-30,000 a year based on past work history and education. Put them to work in a new conservation corps that conserves energy-- providing free or low cost energy efficiency assessments and upgrades to homes, working as subsidized employees in manufacturing industries where labor costs have made the US non-competitive. Income taxes will return some of the money. Consumer spending will return most of the money. Give some of it as food stamps, some as chits that can be spent so money goes further if used to purchase from small businesses instead of giant corporations-- so, say the chits are worth $200, they will buy $200 worth of goods at Walmart, but $240 worth of goods at Joe's hardware store. If ten million people are paid an average of $25,000 a year, that's $250 billion a year, plus about $50 billion a year for medicare for them-- a pittance compared to what was spent on banks, in money that won't come back to the economy.
Military Re-do: Clean up, no throw out, most of the 700+ military bases in scores of countries and a bloated, out of control military that is unaccountable to congress or the president. We're using mainframe military thinking, policy and leadership, dating back to the sixties and fifties. It needs to be just about totally thrown out and re-evaluated and replaced with new ideas and technologies aimed at maintaining peace and protecting the US and our national interests. And we need to look VERY carefully at what we define as national interests-- like funds for education, health care, our society's weakest members. Of course that will mean ending our military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.
End drug laws that involve victimless crimes. End the marijuana laws and save billions on prison and court hearings, freeing police and prosecutors to investigate banksters and health insurers. Start taxing the drugs. While you're at it, you'll end the source of funding of most gangs and a lot of organized crime. Oh, it may piss off some alcoholic, porn consuming redneck fundamentalists.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Time-for-Spring-Cleaning-t-by-Rob-Kall-100330-535.html
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