The Democrats of Rossmoor
Ten-Point Wish List for America
Eric Anschutz, Walnut Creek, CA, October, 2005
Many of the recommendations made here would be costly, especially
if they were done on the grand scale that I would urge. However,
expenditures of this kind are investments that in the end would pay
for themselves many times over, enriching the nation not only in
material ways but also in improvement of the lives of our citizens
and in enhancement of our stature in the community of nations.
1. Spending on our military should be massively reduced. The paradox here is that such a reduction would increase security by enhancing our “soft power” and moral authority world wide. Our economy and the lives of every American family would be enriched by freeing resources for needed domestic programs. The bloated US military budget (exclusive of the costs of the Iraq war) is greater than the sum of military spending of all other nations. At a time when our enemies are suicide bombers and pajama-clad insurgents, the many billions of dollars spent on deployment of unnecessary and non-functioning missile defense, and on development of new fighter aircraft and nuclear-tipped missiles are demonstrably less important to our security than the same billions spent to improve education or medical care or national infrastructure.
2. Federal spending must once again be brought into balance
with tax income. We must return to sharply progressive taxation where
the wealthiest among us would pay substantially higher tax rates
than ordinary wage-earners. We should restore the estate tax (dubbed
death tax by its opponents) for all bequests greater than about $2
million, with higher rates applied to estates above, say, $10 million.
3. First-rate education, from pre-school to post-doctorate, should
be available to all who are qualified. Something like the post-WWII
GI Bill that made it possible to provide college or vocational training
for so many returning soldiers should be enacted. Teaching at all
levels should be esteemed as one of our most honored professions,
and remunerated accordingly to attract the best of our young people
to its ranks. There should be a nationally endowed Education Research
Center to lead the world in development of educational methodology,
textbooks, and teacher-training programs, and make best-practices
and educational success models from around the world available for
local school systems to adopt and adapt as they see appropriate for
their communities.
4. Medical care must be available to all, based on a single payer
system. Administrative costs can be greatly reduced by more aggressive
introduction of medical information technology. Federal funding and
direction of stem cell research should be provided. Government sponsored
universal health care makes good economic sense for a number of reasons:
first, our major corporations (e.g. General Motors, Delphi, all airlines)
are threatened with bankruptcy because of the drain of private health
care costs; second, those of our citizens who are covered by health
care plans are indirectly paying for those not covered; third, universal
coverage would encourage earlier attention to emerging health problems,
and include preventive care that would lessen the incidence of more
serious illness and associated higher costs; fourth, administrative
costs would be far less with single-payer coverage than with the
myriad of private plans currently available. Administrative costs
for Medicare are far lower than for private insurance plans.
5. America needs a world class infrastructure, to include roads,
railways, air traffic control, bridges, flood control, water supplies,
electrical grids, rail and airline service, sewers, waste disposal
systems, and environmental controls that would give us clean air,
clean water, and rejuvenated forests.
6. Energy independence must be achieved through greatly intensified
research into and aggressive deployment of alternative technologies,
to include solar, wind, hydrogen, nuclear, ethanol, clean coal and
hydro-power. Energy conservation should be enhanced (and environmental
pollution reduced) by more widespread use in automobiles of improved
technologies and/or alternative fuels.
7. We require a vibrant economy, efficiently producing products and
services and ideas, superior in both quality and utility, competitive
with those produced in any other country and thereby raising our
balance of trade (now grossly negative) to levels of surplus. Properly
managed, our technological excellence should be the basis for leadership
in basic manufacturing. We should be leading the world in development
and production (and export) of “green” technologies,
such as waste management, toxic emission controls, water purification,
and desalinization.
8. A “model” America would proudly enact legislation
to the effect that war could be declared only by a super-majority
of both houses of congress and that American military power will
never again be used without prior debate in Congress and a declaration
of war. Our current policy, where a president can commit our military
without congressional consideration and action, places entirely too
much power in the hands of one person.
9. America should form a Department of Peace Studies, based on the
legislation authored by Dennis Kucinich. Wars, we have learned, are
often (even mostly) counterproductive. Our wars in Vietnam and Iraq,
both now widely regretted, serve to illustrate that it is far easier
to get into war than it is to end it on acceptable terms.
10. Another wish for America is for a greater willingness to debate
issues, and a process by which such debate would be encouraged and
kept civil. We need to move away from the negative and hostile spirit
exemplified in this citation from a speech to Republican fund-raisers
by Virginia Senator George Allen: asking for donations to his party’s
coffers. Allen said he wanted “not just to beat Democrats,
but to kick their soft teeth down their whiny throats.” Conservatives
have persuaded themselves that God and family values and patriotism
are their territory alone. Liberals, in turn, are sure that only
they understand and empathize with the needs and aspirations of minorities
and the poor. Both sides need to search for common ground.