June 26, 2007 at 21:56:40

Construction Zone

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By Mick Jackson (about the author) Page 1 of 1 page(s)

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Construction Zone

There is a liberal contributor on the Delphi Forums (an online set of discussion forums) named Richard who attaches the following personalized suffix to his political posts: "Only 589 days left". Three days later it happily reads "Only 586 days left". Richard, like many of us, is counting the days until Bush leaves office on January 20th, 2009. The exciting aspect of this so slowly diminishing arithmetic is that it will eventually reach zero; the problem is that it is such a long time to wait. Of course, many of us hope for and many of us will work for the election of a Democratic President and Congress. Which leads me to my issue of this piece: Construction Zone.

I think that we have to consider what tasks a Democratic administration will need to perform to get America rolling again. For starters they have to:

1. Institute universal health coverage
2. Restore our ravaged environment
3. Rebuild our alliances with other democratic countries
4. Create a fairer society in dealing with the poor, minorities, and immigrants
5. Get us out of Iraq
6. Remove the influence of lobbyists and money in politics
7. Establish safeguards for electronic voting and stop voter disenfranchisement
8. Invest money in education to equalize opportunities

It is questionable whether the Democrats, who in the past six years have been more Demowimps (or Wimpocrats), will be up to the task, but in the ever narrowing difference between the only two realistically winnable parties, what other choice do we have?

Of course, we need a slogan, a motto. Possible candidates that flitted through my mind were a "new redeal', "construct America" (construct rather than reconstruct since many vital parts e.g. universal health coverage have never existed here), "build America", "For a stronger America" (the Kerry-Edwards 2004 bumper sticker slogan). Then I thought of the resonance of the final words of Bellamy's pledge of allegiance "with liberty and justice for all", voiced billions of times since its formulation in 1892. These simple six words constitute a firm skeleton of political principles upon which my eight tasks (and many others) will securely stand. This slogan clearly will differentiate the new administration from unstated slogan of the previous eight years in which the pledge was deformed into "liberty for some and justice for few".

Mick is an immigrant working in the computer industry living in the US heartland. He immigrated from Great Britain about 30 years ago and became a citizen. He likes biking and hiking. He is married with three kids.

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