1) De-annex Texas. I've suffered two Texas presidents. A slew of Asian land wars for what? Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, possibly Iran. I'm old enough to remember the 1960s cant about stopping North Vietnam because communism was marching across Asia. Dominoes were falling. So they tried to get me into the military to fight their mindless war. Tens of thousands of other Americans went and died, hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese, billion$ spent to defoliate the jungle. And now? A united Vietnam today competes with non-communist economies and loads the world with discount, low quality coffee beans. For that we fought a war?
2) Stop the Iranistan wars already -- $15 billion monthly says that great patriot, Senator Stevens (R-Alaska). Compare that to Wal-Mart's annual EDITDA of $22.3 billion. Or even massive Exxon's EDITDA, less than $70 billion. Some CEOs have recently been fired for just losing a few billion in the mortgage ponzi scheme. All those CEOs combined didn't lose $15 billion a month. Not only wars pauperize America's future: we're subsidizing petroleum, corn and soybeans to record prices while nation's infrastructure goes to hell. New Orleans levees? Minneapolis's bridge of death?
3) We need fiber or wireless high speed Internet across America. Earlier generations built canals, railroads, Interstate highways, rural electricity service. we need universal Internet. Think of the jobs.
4) Labor unions are dead in America. Every worker is completely replaceable. Time for consumer unions! Boycott the shoddy, corrupt, unhealthy. Your real power's in your debit card and PayPal account.
5) Get greener. Railroads for people, not stuff made in China. Electric cars. Americans have the world's largest carbon footprint, a black mark against our future. Recycle more, including electronics and ourselves.
The new U.S. energy law subsidizes corn and oil but not solar or wind power! Abandon the frontier mentality that resources are to be mined and used as fast as possible. Ownership is a fraud upon the planet. We do not OWN, we merely use or borrow. As the old ad said, "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature." Think New Orleans.
6) Economic growth is planetary death. From Wall Street to Beijing, econonic growth is the financial god. Repent, all you winners! How much more stuff do we really need? Growth-addiction economics paved open space, consumed finite resources, polluted our planet, left millions to starve and increased the chance for error in complex social and economic systems. Think New Orleans.
We must stop human population growth. Rev. Malthus's warnings shall haunt us. If we don't stop population increase, the Earth will. If we truly need more houses put them over parking lots or coal pits. Stop paving precious farmland in Illinois and California. Housing slump? We need a moratorium.
7) Make America proud again. Impeach Cheney. He stopped California's anti-smog law, started the Iraq War in violation of international law, set up Secretary Colin Powell to lie to the entire planet. The only good thing he's done in office is shoot a fellow Republican in the back.
Why's Cheney a business problem? Right now America's global corporations apologize. They can't claim pride in the U.S. We have an incompetent regime that lies, tortures, invades, kills, antagonizes and bullies. It's spent ineffectively, corruptly, foolishly, recklessly. Think New Orleans. We've borrowed record amounts. We lead the world in debt both personal and governmental. American business has one strong suit: the weak American dollar. How pathetic is that?
8) Behold the cockroaches and Rattus norvegicus for they shall inherit the Earth. We need an attitude check. The trouble starts right in the first chapter of the Bible: "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." -- Genesis Ch. I, Verse 26
We need to get over that patriarchal superiority claptrap before it's too late. We homo not-so-sapiens could be the next dinosaurs. Right now we're just another over-amped, aggressive primate with delusions of immortality. What makes you or me better than a polar bear?
9) Time for some economic fairness. That would mean health care for Americans, even little kids. Throttle the ever-growing prison and punishment industry.
What we Americans spend to punish or imprison people is way out of proportion to other nations. Are we that uncivilized? Or have we been sold a lot of hooey about prisons making us safer? Time to ban the words "war on..." and we can start with "War on Drugs" which has been just as successful as "War on Poverty" or "War on Crime" or "War on Illiteracy" or "War on Colorblindness." I wouldn't even support a "War on Guns."