For Sunday, March 9, 2008                                        Drummer Column, Gibbs, 789 words

 

If I were President of these United States

 

     If I were President of the United States of America, these would be the planks of my platform.

     Before I give them, be advised, I’m a liberal democrat when it comes to social policies, and a fiscal conservative when it comes to restricting the money flow. I’d have voted for a Ron Paul Dennis Kucinich ticket.

     I don’t want to restrict how people live their lives or shape their families. If gays want to get married, good for them. If people feel that medicinal marijuana helps them deal with their perceived illnesses, leave them alone in their victimless indulgences. If people want to visit Vancouver or Tijuana, I’d make it easy. If people from Vancouver or Tijuana want to visit America, I’d make it harder, but not impossible. At least currently, more people want to sneak in than sneak out. That may change if I’m not elected.

     One of the first things I would do is trash this nonsense about small government. I would trash the claim that deregulation is good for Americans. I would stop the move to privatize everything we do for profit. I will turn a deaf ear to the hollow claim that business can do anything and everything better than the government. Business needs profits. Governments don’t. Doing it right is all about hiring the best people and paying them well.

     Most say that a government’s core responsibility is to protect its citizens. The rest should be left to the open market. I agree with that. My lingering question is protection from whom? We all agree terrorists and invaders need repelled. However, I think the government also needs to protect its citizens in the open market.  We need a powerful law-enforcing guardian against price fixers, shortage makers, faulty manufacturers, careless providers, false marketers, rampant polluters, market corner-ers, scoundrels and other such flim-flam. There is too much of that going on.

     I would take back the voting process 10 seconds into office. All voting machines would become government property. Voting computers would be programmed by government technicians or through contracts with private companies who win their bids open and fair. The software and hardware would be thoroughly criss-cross-cross-criss-cross checked for accuracy. Every one of them would produce paper receipts. Those receipts would be dropped into sealed vaults in case recounts are needed. I would work to make voter math the exact science it was intended to be.

     I would bring back the Fairness Doctrine. Equal time for opposing viewpoints would be resurrected from its tomb. This notion that news corporations have the same first amendment rights as humans, and the right to squelch all opposing views, would end. No more could their amplified voices that reach millions be allowed to say, “My network supports one political ideology only, and we do world news.” They could have both. It is a free country. But news and opinions would have to be separated: objective reporting on one channel, philosophical debates on another, and a third channel for the detractors – sort of like Fox owning Comedy Central.

     I would take back the private prisons. I would repeal all bills passed by the lobbied efforts to increase prison sentences for lesser and lesser crimes in order to increase the prison population and turn a profit. I would release a lot of our victimless criminals, or lower their sentences, or send them to hospitals and therapy.

     I would protect and reward all whistle-blowers. I would provide them with witness relocation if it were necessary. I would encourage them to step forward through a series of posters that read: “Uncle Sam Wants You.”

     I would protect our public water system. I would push back the private interests that are buying up many of our lakes, reservoirs, and streams in preparation for controlling water. Water would forever be, during my administration, a public resource, safe, sound, and inexpensive.

     I would rewrite NAFTA until it fairly met the needs of the American worker and stopped its enticements for factories to outsource.

     Oil. What would I do there? I’d take the trillions we are spending trying to seize it from others and invest in the alternatives. Instead of sending 12 billion a month to Iraq, like we are now, I’d put 12 billion toward solar, 12 toward wind, 12 toward hydrogen, 12 toward conservation, a few million toward ethanol, and 12 for education. That would take me into the summer of my first year in office.

     I don’t hate big business, my fellow Americans. That’s not it. Big businesses are just small businesses run right. I only want them to play fair. That, too, is a battle I wouldn’t expect to win, but it is a battle I would commit to fight ceaselessly. If elected.