After we take the House and Senate: Undoing the Neo-Con damage to our country

Sometimes, against my overwhelmingly cynical nature, I actually do manage to slip a positive thought in there.

In this case, I am wondering if maybe we are meant to be where we are. Perhaps we were meant to go through the last 6 years of hell with this current group to wake everyone up, so that they see the damage that a lack of checks and balances can do.

The neo-con cycle of crushing debt, war, and feeding the massive Military-Industrial-Complex will end. If it does not end by our hands, and by our changes, it will end by imploding and collapsing on itself. It’s the way of war-like empires. The Romans, the French, the British; they were all massive empires that once dominated the world. History shows time and again, that they could not sustain themselves. History will prove the same of the United States as well. Unless we change it.

The way to true change in the United States, is to take back the country that used to belong to us. Here are some of the steps.

Step 1-Get out and vote. Find a way to get people to the polls no matter what.

We desperately need control of at least the legislative branch back. There is going to be no better opportunity to do so than this now. The Conservative poll numbers are the lowest that they have been since the neo-cons took power in 2000. Get our people in office. Only then can we proceed to the next step

Step 2-Out of Iraq. The Iraqis have their new Government. They have their new Parliament. They want us out of there. They have said so. Leave. Sell the embassy and the military bases back to the Iraqi government, and get the hell out, and that includes any future military presence we had planned.

We do have a responsibility to clean up the mess that the Bush Administration has caused. We can do that by assisting them financially for the first year in their rebuilding. But, the Iraqi government is going to have to do the work, and hire the people. No Halliburton contracts, no outside contractors coming in to do the work.

The point is, to get the Iraqi people back to work, earning a living again, and supporting their families like they were before the United States came in and destroyed that.

Step 3-Take back the media. Knowledge is power. Break up the media monopolies that Ronald Reagan helped to form in the late eighties. Presently the media is in the hands of a few select corporations that are loyal only to their investors and shareholders.

This has to change. Integrity, truth and investigation have been replaced with bottom line and profit. We have “talking heads” that don’t even bother with the real issues confronting Americans. We need reporters and journalists that are not afraid to ask tough questions to our elected officials. The American people desperately need to know the issues confronting them and the world. Most of all, this unholy alliance between the news stations and the Pentagon has to end.

The media being little more than unpaid advertisers and dispensers of government propaganda is something that the Soviet Union used to do, and we all saw what happened to them.

Step 4-Roll back all of the regressive tax cuts to the super-wealthy. The only way we can even hope to get back in the black, is by taxing the super wealthy businesses like they should be.

“Oh. More tax and spend liberalism” the talking heads on Fox-News will scream. Pardon my language, but screw them. The very multinationals that are screaming the loudest about taxes, are also the very ones that have caused the current mess that we are in. It’s time they finally started paying for it.

It’s because of ultra wealthy multinationals we are throwing money into black holes in places like Iraq. It’s because companies like Halliburton, and GE don’t pay their fair share that we are selling off parts of our national parks to China to keep our heads above water. It’s time for them to pay their bills like grownups.

Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the Military-Industrial complex in his farewell address. None the less, between the 60s and the 00s, the defense budget has continued, year after year, to skyrocket. One-third of the national budget is annually awarded to the Pentagon, and they in turn funnel billions of these dollars into the coffers of corporations such as Bechtel, GE, and SAIC.

Step 5-Repeal NAFTA, CAFTA, and all the other *FTA’s. It was a mistake. We should admit it and move on. It has done nothing but take jobs out of our country; while making the rich richer, and the poor poorer. It has also caused a completely un-sustainable trade imbalance with the rest of the world.

Step 6-Public financing of campaigns ONLY, and term limits etched in stone.

Each legislator must also live on their Congressional or Senatorial salary, and show proof that they are living within those means. No money from lobbyists, no money from special interest groups, no campaign contributions, no $25000 dollar a plate dinners to fundraise from big business shills.

No outside money period, and they must account for every penny that they spend during their entire term. If they get caught, they get run out of office on a rail. Period, no exceptions. That’s the only way we can start to rid our Government of this never-ending string of bribery and corruption scandals, and stop the merger of big business and Capital Hill.

Step 7-Redirect the money we are spending. You want to win the war on terror? Start by REALLY winning hearts and minds. For goodness sake, $427 Billion Dollars this year ALONE in defense spending? Not to mention the $290-plus BILLION that the Iraq war has cost us so far. Where I come from, that is known as “jaw-droppingly absurd.”

I’m a veteran. I served in the U.S. Navy, and I believe in providing for the common defense. I believe we need a military to protect our borders. But we need a military this bloated and out of control why? If we took just HALF of the money we have used for nationalism and war, and redirected it to agriculture, education, health care, and shelter, we would be witness to a very different world in which the poorest and most vulnerable would be much better off. It would put the terrorists out of business. They wouldn’t have that base of people with “nothing to lose” to draw from.



This is all just a start, of course. The work never ends.

To have a true legacy, we must constantly keep moving forward. Education, Health care reform, the growing disparity between the rich and poor, global warming and disregard for the environment, and the disappearing middle class.

Where to start? It makes your head spin sometimes.

Start by believing that the Constitution is meant to protect individual rights, establish personal responsibilities, and describe the operations of government, as well as describing the general principles of how our society is to be run. But, temper that with the knowledge that the Constitution originally served the interests of rich white male landholders, and needed to be changed from time to time. Remember that African-Americans were forbidden to vote until 1870. Women were forbidden to vote until 1920. Tax debtors were forbidden to vote until 1964. Young people were forbidden to vote until 1971.

Similarly, much of the Bill of Rights was not defended or enforced until recently. It is because of Liberals such as us, that the Constitution changed.

Keep that in mind, the next time a “Constitutional Scholar” such as Rush Limbaugh attempts to push his revisionist twists of reality upon us.

the repugs have spent years hiring conservative bureaucrats
and stooges at all levels of government... well first thing is
throw these bums out.. they are a cancer on our govt.

Restoration Act" that will pass constitutional muster and will empower the FCC to take licenses away from Murdoch, Ailes, Limbaugh's bosses, and all the others who have churned out ultra-right propaganda for 20 years. After setting up the Republican pillaging of trillions from FICA, Reagan's 1986 destruction of the Fairness Doctrine has been his most lasting legacy of economic and political destruction for the ordinary American.