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1. Full employment, or as close to it as we can possibly get.
Republican employment guidelines call for a permanent five percent unemployment rate; they figure that the economy will collapse if there is less. (The intent, which could be good, is to make sure that there will be people to hire if someone wants to open a new business. This doesn't do much for the people who are jobless because the economy will crash tomorrow if more than 95 out of every 100 people who want to work are doing so.) Clinton showed that you can have a vibrant economy with four percent unemployment. I think you could go to two percent unemployment and still be okay. The odds on someone just coming into an area and opening a business that requires five percent of the available population to work there, and NOT bringing a lot of those people with them as they move their business to a new lower-tax/no-union paradise, are fairly low.
2. A workable healthcare plan.
3. Not starting unnecessary wars, but being both willing and able to quickly and decisively win necessary ones. Further, listening to the generals when working on military budgets, considering wars and so on.
4. Fair trade.
This means termination or tariffing of trade with nations that do not allow US imports access to their markets as freely as we allow their imports access to ours. Example: Japanese import car regulations. For many years, and I believe it still happens, if you want to import cars into Japan each must go through a "safety inspection" at the point of entry. The process entails a nearly complete disassembly of the car to "ensure it meets Japanese highway standards." This jacks the price of a non-Japanese car up to the point where an imported car is a rarity on Japanese roads. Now, to bring a Japanese car into the United States the manufacturer must simply attest that the vehicle meets DOT standards in effect on the date the vehicle was assembled.
I figure we start tearing down Japanese cars at the Port of Seattle and making the importer pay for the "inspections" and all of a sudden it's going to become very easy to import cars into Japan.
5. Living wages.
A "minimum wage" isn't good enough when you need two or three of those jobs to keep a roof over your head.
6. Social security and Medicare reform that works.
7. Fiscal responsibility.
8. Reforming the political system.
There are things computers are good for. There are things paper and pens are good for. Voting is a job for the second.
I want three other changes, too. First is a new election date--the first Saturday after July 4. Next, total public funding of elections. And finally, the elimination of presidential primaries.
9. A sound energy policy.
Alternative fuels are only part of a total energy policy.
They say Bush doesn't have an energy policy; that's an unfair thing to say. Of course he has one: drilling in ANWR and using the 82nd Airborne to seize the oilfields of anyone who pisses him off by thinking of taking Euros for their oil.
Not being in the energy industry, I can't give specifics on this total plan, but I know a few things it must contain: conservation, fair trade practices, alternative energies, designing a low-pollution way to use coal. Perhaps safer nuclear energy--France gets three-quarters of their electricity from nuclear, and they have a good record of safety with it, so it's possible to use it without destroying the world. Oh, and making sure anyone named Bush or Cheney never works in this industry again.
10. Ensuring that the born have rights.
The right will tell you all about the rights of the "pre-born." What about the rights of the "post-born"?
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