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Dear President Obama:
I am a citizen of the United States who voted for you in the last election. Your task is enormous. Like many, I am pleased with some of the things you have done since your inauguration, but disappointed with many others. Overall, I remain convinced you are the right man for this job right now. That being said, I would urge you be less accommodating to your opponents, especially those who put the interests of their corporate donors ahead of the interests of their constituents.Ignore the corporate media pundits who say you are in danger of overexposure to the people. Continue your conversation with us as often as you have something important to say. Too many Americans think you will solve all our problems. Remind us that you need our continued involvement.
Every generation thinks that theirs is the pivotal epoch. We have many reasons to think so today. The world’s changing climate and our nation’s weakened economic situation are two particularly compelling ones. There are others. If we want this country to be together and recognizable in 50 years, we need bold action. You must show Congress the way.
Here are my views on some major issues of the day:
Economics
The Bush-Neocon plan to ring up huge foreign debts and repay them with devalued dollars works well for large corporations and financiers, but will have devastating effects on middle class and poor Americans. People who say deficits don’t matter are wrong in the long term. The federal government must stop hemorrhaging cash. We must protect the value of the dollar and the solvency of our public institutions. That may mean tax increases; it will certainly mean a severe curtailment of global military actions which serve primarily to protect multinational corporate interests. Discretionary funds we do spend should be directed into real projects building real infrastructure right here in the USA.The current stimulus plan of roads and cars seems short sighted. We need public transit, solar and wind power, energy efficiency, good schools, and a clean environment. The TARP program seems particularly poorly conceived; phase it out, and reallocate those funds. It is time to end the practice of rewarding those industries whose greed, mismanagement and lack of accountability has put our nation into financial peril. Corporate criminals and Wall Street greed-heads need jail, not bail. Middle class and lower income Americans are losing everything. That makes multi-billion-dollar bailouts of the ultra-wealthy unbearable. Your credibility is at stake here. Banks, in particular, must be brought to heel with new laws which promote transparency, discourage speculation, and impose severe penalties for malfeasance.
The little kings and princes of Wall Street need to be taken down a few pegs. We need more of our smart young people going into engineering and manufacturing, not financing. Use your bully pulpit toward this end.
Health Care
Stick to your demands for a public option. A mandate to purchase health insurance, without a viable public option, simply rewards the corporate criminals whose unconscionable greed has caused the very problem you are trying to solve. Such a solution is wholly unacceptable to the American working class. I am a capitalist, and I believe in the free market, but not every aspect of society should be profit motivated. Fire protection, police services, and justice all have a strong public component. Health care is more like that than building widgits. Civilized counties should not allow a few to make outrageous profits from the misery of many.All Americans should be able to fall back on a basic, no-frills public insurance plan. Those who are willing and able to purchase healthcare should be free to supplement or replace that coverage with an insurance plan of their choosing. Use healthcare reform to encourage preventive medicine and healthy living. No amount of pills and procedures can make up for years of bad habits. It is essential to give Americans an incentive to eat right and exercise. Auto insurance rates provide an incentive for good driving; health insurance rates must provide an incentive for Americans to be healthier.
The public healthcare option is a clear winner for employers who give Americans good jobs. The current healthcare system makes American-made products less competitive, and encourages companies to shift jobs overseas. Relieving responsible companies of the healthcare burden whenever they put Americans to work is imperative. Never, ever stop selling that point; healthcare reform is inextricably linked to good jobs and economic growth, and a public option will pay major rewards to American citizens and employers over time.
Energy
If this country and this planet is to survive, humans must wean ourselves from dependence on fossil fuels. America must show the way by developing the world’s most advanced clean energy economy. In addition to solar and wind, we need to ramp up efficiency, and knock down the regulatory barriers which stymie the development of new energy sources, such as anaerobic digestion or gasification of wastes. The electric grid must be modernized to accommodate our new, decentralized energy infrastructure. Every American city must have clean, affordable public transit, and be linked by clean, efficient high-speed rail.The easiest and fairest way to raise the money needed for investment in a cleaner energy future is with a carbon tax. A cap-and-trade system will make a lot of money for traders, but the pollution benefits will be too little, too late. Gasoline companies regularly raise the price for a gallon by a nickels or a dime per week. Raise the gas tax a nickel per gallon immediately, and add a penny per year for the next 10 years. Dirtier fuels, like coal, should also be taxed. It is morally wrong for the United States to refuse to drill for oil on its own shores, while purchasing oil from multinational corporations who plunder pristine foreign lands. We have little control over how Big Oil operates in places like Nigeria, Colombia or Papua New Guinea , but their track record is terrible. They do things there that would never be acceptable here. This fuels anti-American and anti-Western sentiment.
Therefore, it is prudent to develop our own resources. It should not be done haphazardly, or in a mad rush. It should be well planned, done using the best technologies available, and I insist we do it in places that millions of Americans will see daily. It is only by witnessing first hand the impacts of fossil fuel production, that Americans will understand the true costs, and make serious efforts to reduce their usage. Ergo, you have my support to drill for oil off the coasts of California and Florida, but not in the Arctic , where the only witnesses will be caribou and polar bears.
War and culture clash
Growing radicalization and vicious armed conflicts in the Third World are often portrayed in the media as a Judeo-Christian vs. Muslim conflict, but I say these conflicts are ultimately economic. These folks all have nothing to lose. The U.S. and the rest of the “ First World ,” cannot prosper unmolested unless the whole world prospers with us. The developing world does not hate us for our freedom, as the idiot Bush said, but rather, they hate us for plundering their resources, defiling their environment and leaving them penniless. We must stop doing that.For 60 years, this country and its allies have pursued policies which allow Western multinational corporations to make obscene profits delivering products to first-world consumers at the expense of third-world citizens and their environment. NAFTA is a good example of this. The World Bank and related American-sponsored financial institutions are also culpable. The denizens of these countries may be poor, but they are not stupid. They know when their environment has been poisoned, when their culture has been denigrated, and when they’ve been ripped off.
While U.S. foreign aid has done many, many good things, these are often outweighed by the outrageous behavior of Western multinationals. Our ability to control these corporations’ behaviors overseas is limited; often local governments are complicit in the destruction. The one area where we have some control is in the use of U.S. armed forces to protect corporate interests. This must end. Corporations, out for private profit, can pay for their own protection.
Toward that end, it is long past the time to end our aggressive wars in around the world. We cannot afford to continue to project military force so far from home. People in places like Iraq, Afghanistan or Somalia will not be subdued by U.S. force, for every terrorist we kill five more will take their place. Corporate investment in unstable foreign lands is a losing bet, but that is their gamble and not ours. Ultimately, the Muslim world will decide what it wants, and that may not include McDonalds and Wal Mart. So be it. It is not for us to decide. The resources under their soil are theirs, not ours; we should strive to neither need nor covet those resources.
One final word about torture: that needs to stop immediately. It never is, or was, the American Way. No nuances need here. Enough said.