10,000 equals 3 trillion divided by 300 million U.S. citizens. 3 trillion is the amount added to the debt by the Bush regime. Our debt now approaches 10 trillion dollars, or a small mortgage for each citizen.
Oh, and the Iraq war. Remember when they said the cost would be about 90 billion? It’s now above 300 billion. And this doesn’t even consider that we have to borrow to pay for this fiasco. When the estimated cost was only 90 billion, the estimate for the financing cost was 300 billion. So what does it cost now to finance this war? Probably over a trillion dollars.
If the Dems do take the Senate, I hope they exercise their fullest ability to correct this situation, starting with impeaching the murderer and his minion. (Which is which, I wonder?)
Here’s my short list of things to be fixed. I don’t know to what extent they can be fixed with the current structure. Probably we need revolution to correct the course of this country and the future of the world. But this is my wish list:
– Nationalize healthcare and revise the healthcare system. Doctors do not need to make so much money. Let them set up their own state-of-the-art practices outside of the public healthcare system, but do have a nationalized public healthcare system and stop letting people who get sick resort to personal bankruptcy. (Ironically, market forces may soon correct this. People now fly to India to undergo expensive operations less expensively.)
– Repair the damage to the constitution – restore the right of habeus corpus from which all other rights gain their power.
– Set up national standards for the voting process and monitoring by independent citizens. Actually, having our votes count is more important than anything. Without this, we do not have even a hope of democracy.
– Set up national districting standards to stop gerrymandering.
– Kill the electoral college. It nullifies democracy. Every vote should have equal weight in every state.
– As a matter of fact, re-think the concept of states’ rights. Currently our cities experience a race to the bottom to give corporations various tax breaks. It’s lose-lose for the taxpayers. Only national regulation can stop this erosion.
– Exercise some manipulative power – get Bush to stop nullifying legislation with his signing statements. Heck, use the threat of impeachment.
– Campaign finance reform. Make everything transparent.
– Stop the prosecution of liberal churches by the IRS.
– Regulate the media, break up the monopolies of large media.
– Locally, let the Conyers commission subpeona Ken Blackwell – make him answer to the fraud and incompetence in Ohio in the 2004 “elections.”
– Repair some of the redistribution of wealth that’s been going on in the past generation to benefit the working class instead. Do this by having sane tax policy and a more equitable minimum wage. Automatic audits of every billionaire?
– Stop financing illegal wars and occupations and military bases. Do not allow “emergency” spending authorization for illegal wars.
– Allow government to stimulate the economy not with military spending, but with investment in education and environmental technologies. We need to have massive structural change if we are to turn back global warming.
– Introduce protectionist legislation so that we can re-develop industries in this country. We need local industry, local products, local markets. Globalization is not good for the environment. It’s a global race to the bottom for the environment and for the working people of the world.
– Create a working national public transportation system so that people can train from city to city rather than plane. Create tax incentives for people to move back into cities – we need to abandon our energy consuming commuting lifestyle.
– Make it possible for every high school graduate to borrow money to go to college at a livable interest rate.
– More strongly regulate credit cards and other preditory lenders such as paycheck loan vendors. Stop allowing them to prey on the materialistic compulsions of young people.
– Restore the power of the EPA.
– Introduce legislation that makes the U.S. comply with the Kyoto treaty.
– Introduce legislation that protects government whistleblowers.
– Stop allowing legislation to be written by corporate interests.
Lady K