1. Get the troops out of Iraq. Of course this is easier said then done, since conditions on the ground have become far too dangerous to allow for an orderly exit. Outward bound truck convoys, for example, would attract roadside bombs and other unfriendly send-offs. The best plan is to find out how thousands of Iraqis are managing to flee the country every day and take the same route.
2. Fight global warming, obesity and traffic congestion by constructing bike paths on all highways and roads.
3. End the war on drugs, thus saving over $30 billion a year. At the same time, gently wean current meth addicts onto Starbucks double shot espresso.
4. Raise the minimum wage to $10 an hour and establish a maximum wage of, say - generously speaking -- $5 million a year.
5. Repair the economy of Mexico so that erstwhile Mexican agricultural workers - displaced by big agribusiness in the wake of NAFTA - no longer have to sneak across the border in order to make a living.
6. Expand Medicare to cover Americans of all ages. (Remember, we just saved $8 billion a month by ending the war.)
7. Require gyms to use the power generated by their cardiovascular machines to provide their own air-conditioning and lighting.
8. Put the President in AA - Aggressives' Anonymous. We thought he had hit bottom with the November election, when he discovered that nobody likes him. Then we thought that a family intervention in the form of the Iraq Study Group would sober him up. But no, he's demanding another binge, or as he puts it "surge."
9. Fix Medicare so it doesn't require supplementary insurance. Also fill in the notorious "doughnut hole" in Part D, preferably not with Krispy Kreme.
10. Establish wildly overpriced services for people who derive a sense of status from the prices they pay. The New York Times reported on December 12th that colleges find they can increase their popularity by raising tuition. OK, so let's have a chain of private colleges charging $100,000 a year and up where the price is part of what you pay for. Maybe we need whole segregated shopping zones full of custom-priced restaurants, etc. where the ultra-rich can pay the exorbitant prices they crave, without driving up prices for the rest of us. Entrepreneurs, are you listening?
11. Demand that pharmaceutical companies sell their drugs in this country for no more than they sell them in Canada, or would that be too much of a patriotic sacrifice?
12. Stop CNN anchor chatter. No, Miles, Tony, Soledad and the rest of you: In the few minutes of your time that isn't devoted to Geico commercials, we don't want to hear about your weekend.
13. Create a new airline -Libertarian Air- for people who would rather risk being blown up than be treated like potential mass murderers every time they fly.
14. Encourage street fairs, block parties and farmers' markets.
15. Work less, play more. Or, ideally, get someone to pay you for playing.