We're looking at near-60 in the Senate. I think it's time we got as ambitious as W, except in ways that will actually help us.
Adjustments to mortgages and to large-scale borrowing are of course important.
But we're going to have the presidency and a majority in Congress the likes of which we may never see again in our lifetimes. Why not make BIG changes, Roosevelt and LBJ-style changes, and stop being the spineless Democratic hand-wringers that have thrown petals along the path of destruction the neocons have left?
Why don't we "spend" our own capital? Have we been beaten down for so long that we've forgotten how to be bold and brave?
Howz about we free up some serious cash and:
--Stop bailing out banks and corporations that demonstrate shitty and/or criminal business practices.
--Fire all executives of any bank system or industry getting large-scale taxpayer help. Allow their stockholders to take the dive, and force them to submit to carefully vetted government management and oversight.
--End the war in Iraq.
--Close Gitmo and all the other evil black sites around the world.
--Stop funding foreign dictators.
--End all contracts with Blackwater, Halliburton, Caci, Triton, etc. (Mercenary armies are illegal.)
--Stop the KGB-style surveillance-of-Americans program.
--End corporate welfare to agribusiness. Let them grow smaller, more local, organic and free-range--that's how farmers survived a hundred years ago.
--Cap and tax carbon emissions, and make polluters trade. Put that money into a new electric grid that would better accommodate wind and solar. Offer community grants for developing clean regional energy-generation (wind, solar, natural gas, etc.)
--Give massive tax breaks and incentives for buying or leasing fuel-efficient vehicles, installing solar panels, wind mills and turbines, and fuel-efficient, reduced-pollution fireplace inserts.
--Invest in road and bridge systems that uniquely accommodate bicycles and slower electric vehicles.
--Fine the shit out of corporations for "toxic spills" that pollute air, water, soil, and living organisms.
--End corporate welfare and preferential treatment to big Pharma, big oil, chemical companies, big coal, etc. .
--End the useless War on Drugs, decriminalize everything. Yes, everything. (People sniff glue, but we haven't outlawed that.) In so doing, we remove the massive black market for drugs, bankrupt drug lords and shadow-government megamafiosos, and save the bloated prison industrial complex for violent criminals, and white-collar fuckers who have wrecked our economy.
--Allow all states to grow industrial hemp.
--Enact universal health care with a huge focus on prevention. This will take the burden of health care off small businesses and our major industries.
--Tax stock trading at the modest rate the UK does. It's too small a rate to bother small traders, and it curbs naked short-selling and the kind of psycho-speculation that drove the price of oil into the stratosphere. And it makes the "whales" and high rollers of Wall Street pay their share for once.
--Tax the living shit out of corporations that offshore to outsource labor and skirt environmental laws. Put a stiff tariff on their products.
--Fine the living shit out of corporations that insource desperate, undocumented foreign labor for the purpose of skirting domestic wage and worker safety laws. Relatedly, stop dumping US-subsidized products (like maize) on Latin American markets and ruining the local farmers there. End policies that hurt Latin American workers in their own countries. (We need not be anti-immigrant to be pro-labor on both sides of the border.)
--Cap tax-exempt status for churches at $250K. If such churches want to set up homeless shelters and soup kitchens and Salvation Army style help centers, fine, those can get their own tax-exempt status. As is, for megachuches and Mormon outfits, tax exempt status provides a tax shelter for the wealthy to wage massive political campaigns, and to hide and launder their money. End this now.
It's time to stop being timid and to think BIG. The GOP is back on its heels, but it won't last. This may be our last chance in a long, long time.
Carpe diem.