We must create a truly benevolent not-for-profit Universal Healthcare System that treats everyone at affordable costs and take insurance companies out of the process.
If we must continue our cultural demand for individual vehicles rather than investing in efficient, economical and environmentally sound mass transit, then we must get rid of the obsolete and polluting internal combustion engine. Electric was better from the start, but killed by powerful interests that greedily favored the technology of our current engine design. Then GM killed yet another efficient electric vehicle in this very decade. GM would be solvent today and not in danger of collapsing if the EV1 was in mass production - and Middle East oil or the false arguments about excessive union labor costs would not even be factors related to their operations.
Stop the insane War on Drugs. It's failing miserably and draining resources we can't possibly afford to waste today. Pot is something Americans want and free people should be allowed to have, like alcohol and cigarettes; make it legal, sell it openly and tax it.
Legalize prostitution. It is happening and it is not going to stop. It too is draining resources best used elswhere. Consenting adults should be allowed to engage in what they choose to engage in as free citizens in a Democracy. Legalizing it addresses the health issues involved, lowers the rates of disease, crime and drug use associated with it as it occurs in today's underground economy and has the added benefit of generating revenue through taxation. I suspect the politicians most opposed to this do not necessarily oppose prostitution so much as they oppose paying the tax themselves and getting caught in the hypocrisy of promoting traditional family values while engaging in this type of behavior.
Cut military spending to a third of what it currently is - which would still be significantly higher than most other countries combined. We can keep our nation secure and at the same time break the back of the military-industrial complex that Ike warned us about. Then we can take that money and put it into programs to do "nation building" here at home and increase manufacturing, rebuild our infrastructure with a vision toward the future and raise the standard of living for all American citizens. In addition, we should pull all soldiers from Iraq, Afghanistan and all other nations on the planet, closing all the bases we can no longer afford to keep running. In short - End the Empire. This will go a much longer way to keeping us safe, especially in respecting the sovereignty of other nations and not give them reasons to hate us due to policies that allow American corporations to destroy their environments, enslave their workers, take their resources for practically nothing and keep all the profits with no benefit at all to those nations or people. It will also help us tremendously in getting out of this massive debt hole we allowed a small, greedy, powerful war-profiteering group to get us into.
Immediately invest in wind and solar power and take advantage of our land mass in that respect - make the wind and solar craze as big as the Texas and Oklahoma oil craze in the last century. Someday maybe someone will write an Oscar winning film about it.
Create a real American Dream based on talent and creativity, not power, lobbyists and corruption and let people look into the future of humanity, the planet, freedom and democracy, in which case, I believe, with corrupt influences marginalized, people will choose the right path... then we can move on...
By doing these things we could, sooner than later, and with a lot less hardship or economic and social turmoil than we are most certainly heading towards, fix OUR nation, start a new manufacturing base in America, creating abundant, stable, middle-class jobs and produce things that people in the world want and will import... then we can go into a future world as a beacon of Liberty, admired by actions worthy of emulation, rather than feared or hated for our heavy-handed hypocritical tactics.
Destruction doesn't have to be our destiny. The choice is ours.
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