America has some big problems and it needs equally big solutions. In this current media-frenzied presidential race, the American people are looking to the two major party candidates -- Mitt Romney and President Barack Obama -- for solutions. However, they are coming back empty-handed as the candidates continue to push their party agendas, speaking in talking points rather than addressing real problems.
Should the candidates care to consider and debate real solutions, they need not work too hard. The country is full of them -- applied here and there or ready on the shelf. I propose many in my new book, The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future. Either candidate is welcome to adopt any of these ideas for ways to improve the lives of all Americans. It is ironic that with the billions of dollars in campaign funds raised in this election, neither party has been willing to put forward solutions to the problems that plague us so.
Here are a few for them.
Let's start with an issue that Obama and Romney won't address -- the violent and thieving corporate crime wave that has swept the country and drained the hard-earned savings, health and safety of millions of people, with little to no law enforcement. Remember Charles Ferguson, director of the Academy Award winning documentary Inside Job who took the stage to accept his Oscar in 2011 and said: "Three years after a horrific financial crisis caused by massive fraud, not a single financial executive has gone to jail, and that's wrong." Rampant corporate crime is going to continue unless we start punishing crime in the suites with at least as much fervor and budgets as we do the crime in the streets.
Let's address Congress, the governing body that has increasingly produced less and rewarded itself more, though it has kept the minimum wage far below that of 1968, adjusted for inflation. I offer two suggestions to this worsening problem -- ideas that have always been met with passion and applause when I've suggested them at rallies all over the country. First -- if Congress and/or the president plunges our country into war, then immediately all age-qualified, able-bodied children and grandchildren of members of Congress are drafted into the armed forces. That'll concentrate Congress' pre-war attention on their constitutional duties that they cannot give up to the White House. It's only fair that if Congress is going to ask the American people to send their sons and daughters to fight and die on foreign soil, they send their own as well. Did you know that during George W. Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq, only six members of Congress had children in the military?
Another simple and transformative suggestion is that members of Congress should not give themselves benefits unless the rest of the country is given them as well. No health insurance, no life insurance, no big pensions and fancy gym facilities unless they see fit to provide them for everybody. That's their job, isn't it? If we want Congress to work for our best interests, Congress needs to have skin in the game and the moral authority to govern.
Finally, let's address the issue of civil liberties in America -- just recently, Mitt Romney dodged a question about his stance on indefinite detention. These are the very questions that need to be answered by our leaders. For over a decade, the civil liberties of United States citizens have been under attack by the politics of fear. Recall Benjamin Franklin's famous words, "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." And so it is, in 2012, the people of the United States find themselves living under the mantra "whatever it takes to protect the American people." Rampant claims of "executive privilege" and "state secrets" and violations of due process have led to "Big Brother" -- The Patriot Act, the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, the continued imprisonment-without-trial of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, and in the U.S., the invasive TSA agents who harass travelers.
And, of course, the assassinations via drone strikes, including ones on American citizens in Yemen, based on secret grounds by a president acting as prosecutor, judge, jury, executioner and cover-upper. These are wrongs that need to be addressed and righted by the Executive Branch, or if it fails to do so, by an awakening Congress.
Those are just some of the points in The Seventeen Solutions. Now is the time to elevate expectations and take on the greatest challenges that face America. As Romney and Obama incessantly debate the status quo, let us start a new discussion vectored toward action.
(Visit seventeensolutions.com for more information on the book and to submit your own solutions to our society's problems.)
Follow Ralph Nader on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Ralph_Nader
What does it take for the population to be angry enough (other emotions will work too, but anger seems to motivate easily) about issues that those we elect will actually do something about it? Trying to make a politician change is impossible, they must be made to see that if they don't behave in accordance with the wishes of the voters then they will have to all go get real jobs.
So how do we impassion the public? How do we fire them up enough that it will last through the weekend and will maybe even motivate them into action. How?
The neoclassical (Krugman’s) false argument is that countries don’t compete. He further falsely argues that anyone who proposes national competitiveness is either a “mercantilist” or a “strategist” who believes in “new trade theory”. Krugman’s false argument against national competitiveness is that government can’t practically determine an effective strategic trade policy in any industry.
The Washington Economic Consensus that is causing slow job recovery is based on the neoclassical (Krugman’s) economic argument which is false because it completely ignores a strategic trade policy which supports national (and firm) competitiveness in a fourth generation (4G) of innovation methodology that can drive a sustainable comparative advantage in innovation which is the core of economic growth.
They own the property beneath our feet. Through their bought contacts on the Congress, as well as the higher judiciary functions, they control every viable and purchasable aspect of life in our nation. Don't even begin to think of it as otherwise, and if you do, you're sadly ill-informed.
From orange juice to toilet paper, nothing you do, nothing you use, can actually be called your own. And for any item you think is yours, take heed . . . you're just renting it for a time, before it falls back into the hands of those who never really let go.
If you live in a society, if you work in a society, if your born, raised and die within a society, then no matter what any prophet might declare, you've been transformed into an asset.
Therein lies the trick. Not being taken advantage of because of it. It's a knotty problem that can't simply be untied with a hammering.
Now that I've connived to warp your day . . . have a nice one.
Which, for the most part, are exactly the same.
You have my respect for continuing to carry the torch, but I am starting to think you are just too good for this world. From the heart---gratitude.
one minority mandated aim?
“Should the candidates care to consider and debate real solutions, they”
aren’t the men for the job they were expressly selected for?
“neither party has been willing to put forward solutions to the problems that plague us so.”
While no man may be an island. Washington is doing a pretty good impression of a gated community.
“the violent and thieving corporate crime wave that has swept the country”
is political power’s host.
“Rampant corporate crime is going to continue unless”
and until it destroys itself. Which given the mass exodus from the trading floors, is well in train. If only there was still a factory somewhere, mass producing suckers.
“if Congress and/or the president plunges our country into war, then”
let those who have amassed the most to protect, go protect it.
“If we want Congress to work for our best interests”
then democracy dictates, that referendums dictate which polices the majority of the people deem in their best interests.
“just recently, Mitt Romney dodged a question”
Maybe he was, on the spur of the moment, stuck for two contradictory answers.
“the mantra "whatever it takes to protect the American people"
might more accurately be expressed as: whatever it takes to protect a self-elected elite.
“a president acting as prosecutor, judge, jury, executioner and cover-upper.”
Isn’t what the American experiment was supposed to be based on. The elixir has been switched for a nostrum.
"By Matt Stoller, a political analyst on Brand X with Russell Brand, and a fellow at the Roosevelt Institute. You can follow him at [snip]
This is probably the least important Presidential election since the 1950s. As an experienced political hand told me, the two candidates are speaking not to the voters, but to the big money. They hold the same views, pursue the same policies, and are backed by similar interests. Mitt Romney implemented Obamacare in Massachusetts, or Obama implemented Romneycare nationally. Both are pro-choice or anti-choice as political needs change, both tend to be hawkish on foreign policy, both favor tax cuts for businesses, and both believe deeply in a corrupt technocratic establishment.
So while the election lumbers on like the death rattles of the wounded animal known American democracy, no one on either side is asking what the plan is for the next term. For Obama, his team is going into rooms of donors and shouting “Supreme Court”, while mumbling something about bipartisanship and $4 trillion, or Simpson-Bowles. What this means is that term two of the Obama White House will be organized around cutting entitlements..."
http://www.realchange.org/nader.htm
I have to give Nader this much, though: he at least recognizes that becoming big enough to matter will require a lot of hard work on a lot of peoples' part, even if he's coercing the hard work out of a lot of people. But at least he understands the enormity of the task. Contrast with Jill Stein, who has no idea and no plan of how to make the Greens matter; she's basically a child playing dress-up.
The reason Jill Stein is so appealing is she hasn't gone down the road necessary to get big enough to matter, nor does she have any intention to. As such, she can talk all the platitudes she wants, with no expectations of actually implementing those platitudes. That's nice work, if you can get it.
A far more viable road to success is backing good Democrats, because they need it. Guys like Russ Feingold, Dennis Kucinich, and Barney Frank are all gone or on their way out thanks to the 2010 election ... that's three solidly progressive Democrats, gone because "Progressive" voters didn't vote. But there are still plenty of Sherrod Browns and Al Frankens among the Democrats; put enough good Democrats in Congress and you can see real change. We were one Senator away from a public option
The Democrats are more likely to strenuously attack a third party threat from the Left rather than challenge the corporate status quo and you are just echoing their talking points..