Lose Texas and Other Business Plans for 2008
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."
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There's no question that Texas provides the Union with more than its fair share of conservative yahoos and regressive influence. However, as a Blue Texan, I take exception to your snide tone and supercilious dismissal of our state.
First of all, since the breadth of your historical experience is so vast you might recall that Johnson ushered in a new era for all Americans by signing the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. How about Head Start? Medicare? Medicaid? ESEA and the Higher Education Act? The Fair Housing Act?
Regardless of his failures, at least he cherished the idea of a Great Society in which ALL Americans could be proud. What President since then has had the guts and the vision for government's role to declare a War on Poverty? This is the man you tar with the same brush you use for George W. Bush.
And maybe Texas has contributed a few other national political figures who deserve your respect. Barbara Jordan, for instance. Sam Rayburn, Speaker of the House of Representatives during WWII. Jake Pickle. How about Lloyd Doggett, who voted AGAINST the 2003 Iraq War authorization, AGAINST the Patriot Act, AGAINST ANWR oil drilling?
LBJ wasn't the only Cold War politician who couldn't throw off the ideological blinders of his day. Would you rather have had Goldwater? or Nixon?
There are a lot of progressive Texans out there working for change at home and in the rest of the country. Think about that before you shoot your damn fool mouth off again about Texas.
De-Annex Texass is what I have been pushing for since the Reagan Administration. but i first starting considering it after the JFK Assassination, when they got the nod to do it over the Flrida and Chicago mobster camps.
Thanks for your notes on economic growth and population. These are often taboo subjects and you bravely tell the truth! As for Texas, didn't Mexico already reclaim Texas? Oh, I guess we COULD make it official. Nice piece!
Dave Gardner
Producer/Director
Hooked on Growth: Our Misguided Quest for Prosperity
www.growth
Deannexing Tejas will be very costly. The USA will have to pay Mejico 80 trillion dollars to take Tejas back.
Sounds like a good, solid progressive agenda.
ONWARD!
http://wom
Remember back when what you're talking about used to be called "ecology" and the people making, largely, these same recommendations were called hippies? It was just as logical then as now, but the only real progress seems to be that there isn't anyone today wanting to bust our heads for saying it.
Except for the drug war. The DEA wasn't even created until 1973 when Nixon and the folks on the Republican side decided that young people, drugs, the antiwar movement, and political clout were all connected. I'd say that they put together a plan against us that even Karl Rove would be jealous of. And it's largely because then, as now, it's easier for parents to ask the government to keep kids from doing things that parents don't approve of than it is for parents to put the time and energy into controling their own children.
After all, isn't it worth it if we protect even one child from ______?
Cheney shot his fellow R in the face.
How about a war on war, do you think they'd get the irony?
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