My "dream team" would have Hillary as VP, Edwards as Attorney General, Richardson as Secretary of State, Dr. Dean Sec of Health or Commissioner of FDA, repairing damage done to USA international by Bush Neocons and 8 years of Corporate Kleptocracy!
Everyone recognizes the endangered perception of the USA in every international context. We are inviting ongoing trouble by allowing the most powerful USA corporations to entirely manipulate many branches of government like the Department. of State, even if you don't ascribe to a Hegelian or a Marxian view of economic and political history.
The FDA also is massively malfunctioning, and the next President must appoint a consumer protection advocate as FDA Commissioner, instead of the tools of Big Pharma who have occupied that position for most of the past twenty years, during both Republican and Democrat presidencies.
What could be of graver international concern for health than powerful corporations, both food manufacturers and drug manufacturers, adding to the destruction of health in hundreds of nations? Big Pharma corporations and Kellogg, Brown and Root, Halliburton, and Blackwater have manipulated to their satisfaction the functioning of the United States Department of State, to do their bidding in contracts, programs, and throughout the State Department and the Pentagon. (Some might say it is the other way around with the Pentagon, which always get what it wants from the US Congress).
This has the cumulative effect of alienating all of the Islamic nations with their 1.2 billion inhabitants, and further besmirches the USA entrepreneurially in South America and in Africa. I am reminded of the policies of the USA expanding in the second half of the 19th Century by destroying millions of Native Americans, with a genocidal intent inherent in that policy of "Manifest Destiny." I see massive similarities between the way LBJ floundered in Vietnam and the dealings of the Bush administration in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. As a nation, we err terribly by tolerating and continuing such destruction.
The next President must move to repair this obviously dangerous malaise by appointing an international healer as US Secretary of State. I see no better person than New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson for this job, not even Richard Holbrooke. More important as qualifications were Richardson's elevation of the international political dialogue amongst the candidates, his early strident support for unequivocally ending the Iraq War, on top of his history as Secretary of Energy and as UN Ambassador.
He would be a better Secretary of State than Condi, Colin, Madeleine, and Warren Christopher all rolled together. Even the corporations will recognize by the decline of their profits, in a strictly Hegelian sense, that they need a Secretary of State who might sow the seeds of international dialogue and conflict resolution, close Guantanamo, reduce the US military presence and its ancillary costs by 40%, reshape a 21st Century Peace Corps, and rapidly return America to a new level of international sanity.
After 8 years of Halliburton running the State Department, military contractors running the Pentagon, Energy Corporations running the Department of industry and writing the Legislation, and Big Pharma running the Food and Drug Administration: what choice is there?
In his commencement address to the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Richardson challenged graduates to combine their new skills with passion, reason and courage, to work in the public interest. Richardson outlined America's past experience and current need for courageous leadership, and laid out initial steps for renewing America's relationship with the world by returning to its traditional support for human rights, the rule of law, and international law. He called on the United States to lead an international effort to protect people trapped in situations like Myanmar and Darfur, when their governments fail to protect their own people. Excerpt:
"When in Philadelphia, it's customary to quote Ben Franklin. And he was right when he said, "An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest." (Of course, Ben probably didn't have to pay the interest on student loans.) But your investment has been more than just money and years. Whether you wanted to or not, you've invested part of yourself in this place. And it has returned the investment."
"America needs to be impeccable in our own human rights behavior -- and that should begin with immediately closing Guantanamo prison and all secret detention facilities, and providing all prisoners everywhere with access to legal counsel. If the US expects others to take us seriously, we need to take ourselves seriously by honoring our own values and all international treaties, including the Geneva Conventions. Once we have re-established ourselves as a nation that honors human dignity, we can begin once again to promote it worldwide. We must join and support enthusiastically the International Criminal Court, so that leaders who engage in or allow crimes against humanity know they will be held accountable. We should reward countries that respect the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, and negotiate, constructively but firmly, with those who do not.
In 1980, Stephen Fox founded New Millennium Fine Art, a Santa Fe gallery specializing in Native American and Landscape, and is very active in New Mexico Legislative consumer protection politics, trying above to get the FDA to rescind its approval for the neurotoxic and carcinogenic artificial sweetener, Aspartame. [http://www.prlog.org/10070694]
In a strictly legislative context, his most important writing has been for the Hawaii Senate: http://www.prlog.org/10056715-hawaii-senate
In his capacity as Contributing Editor of the Santa Fe Sun News, Fox recently interviewed Mikhail Gorbachev: http://www.prlog.org/10064349-mikhail-gorbachev
He has been adamant and resourceful about exposing the charlatans of the sometimes-organic food movement. Take the time to read this press release concerning California Attorney General Jerry Brown's suits against Whole Foods, Avalon, and others, for either knowingly or negligently adding a deadly carcinogen to their body care products and soap, as in Whole Foods 365 Label products: http://www.prlog.org/10079593
He cordially invites all Op Ed News readers to visit New Mexico in 2008!
i dont get it. why are people still trying to protect hilary? what has this woman done or said that would gain anyone's support. she has proved herself a hawk over and over by supporting the war and its continued financing of it. when bill was elected people thought him 'soft' on war but he started more wars than i can think of. i think hiliary will do the same, not only because she wants to look strong, but also because she is a racist to the core and supports large corporate interests. she is a politician, meaning that she will go whichever way the wind blows if it gets her what she wants=the public be damned!
and why would obama want someone like her. she sees the world very differently than he does. i don't know how well he will do in caging the corporate beast in this country /world, but i do know hiliary will keep feeding that beast and our surivival can't stand anymore of that, particularly with the Codex breathing down our necks and hilary supporting it.
i would have loved seeing a woman president, but not this one. she betrays everything that i believe in.
by
tanya (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 26 comments)
on Monday, May 26, 2008 at 1:55:49 AM
by the last Clinton administration. One can not reverse NAFTA or take on corporations (like oil or Monsanto) with Clinton as VP. Even Obama can't sell a program of "change" while following a program of "appeasement to the DLC".
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Samuel Bryan (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 120 comments)
on Monday, May 26, 2008 at 9:19:16 AM
I sometimes agree with what both of you are saying. It is obvious that because she is coming in second to Obama, that she could be offered the VP position, so I am just saying we should get used to it, unless Obama determines he can still clobber McCain with a different Vice Presidential candidate, which has yet to be determined. I have met her in Santa Fe, and she seems like maybe one knotch above an ordinary political hack, and of course, in a state capital like Santa Fe with its legislature, we have plenty of experience with ordinary political hacks. I don't hate her or the period of Bill's Presidency; I do strongly oppose NAFTA and the kind of BS that is ostensibly coming next in that department, like a "Union" between Canada, US, and Mexico; I abhor the manipulation of the governmental processes by big corporations, and this ideal cabinet idea of mine answers at least some of the need to get the big corporations. Either of you or anyone else disagree with that premise?
My main effort in writing this is to help bring about Richardson in the Secretary of State's job. Either of you disagree with that? Got anybody better in mind?
Even that may be "moot," if he and Obama decide he should have the VP candidacy; if that is to be the case, he will be the most internationally minded VP in probably one hundred years!
by
Stephen Fox (64 articles, 2 quicklinks, 10 diaries, 253 comments)
on Monday, May 26, 2008 at 10:14:36 AM
only the packaging will change with the next administration.
I think anyone that believes that any Democrat is going to break the stranglehold big money has on this country, is so delusional as to be irrational. Democrats like the Republicans will never bite the hand that feeds them. Obama, Richardson, Clinton they all say pretty things that could make one believe they care and would do the right thing. The problem is I look at their records. The things they have done and the things they haven't done when they could have. Reality is truth, truth is fact and when one looks at the facts it is easy to see that only the packaging will change with the next administration.
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arlen custer (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 6 diaries, 247 comments)
on Tuesday, May 27, 2008 at 1:45:53 PM
My, what a dismal view you have of the world, truth, politics, etc.... Obama's book, the Audacity of Hope: doesn't that mean anything to you? Read it, and decide. Kennedy and Rockefeller backing Obama means nothing? I know Richardson personally, and have almost a deep faith that he is itching to overturn all of the Bush/Neocon horrible acts in the international realm, and as VP or as SOS, he could get that done. Remember: I am a New Mexican and have known Richardson for 30 years, since he was a staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Capitol Hill. Have some faith; you might become happier.....You perhaps are forgetting how ghastly the past 8 years have been. Please read some Hegel if Marx is too radical for you, and see exactly and precisely where the hell we are as a nation....
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Stephen Fox (64 articles, 2 quicklinks, 10 diaries, 253 comments)
on Tuesday, May 27, 2008 at 9:19:10 PM
I know where we are as a nation and as a world. I have read parts of Obamas books and liked what he said. Talk is cheap. I look at what he has done and has not done. I also understand how politics work in this country. One senator can gum up the works to stop any legislation or presidential order. If Richardson or any other Democrat would have wanted to stop this administration from doing any of the things it has done, They Could Have. If you think I have a negative view of things its only because I refuse to ignore reality. It is pretty ugly but I'm not affraid to look at it. I will not overlook reality and believe some lies just to feel better about things. That is what has gotten us into this mess.
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arlen custer (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 6 diaries, 247 comments)
on Wednesday, May 28, 2008 at 11:29:30 AM
why can't hillary be considered a secretary instead
I agree, Richardson is awesome, especially because he convinced me on his campaign tour in Iowa that he would not buckle under in tough situations....
but hillary? give her a committee to chair, a head of health, education and welfare, je ne sais quoi....she and Dean could figure out how to include health as part of education instead of the ridiculous looks I get from teachers when they complain about a low-functioning "special" kid and I ask simply, what did he have for breakfast? hillary should fix that for the sake of women, mothers and birth defects everywhere....
and where is biden? shouldn't he at least be minister of defense? He is the only one who dares defy washington's orders and instead goes to stand to be with the families as their children come off the planes in flag draped coffins....
by
karmacounselor (1 articles, 0 quicklinks, 6 diaries, 64 comments)
on Wednesday, May 28, 2008 at 2:09:32 PM
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