Are you willing to kill the rich, risk your neck, challenge the government (who just required me to sign the Patriot Act) to make a change?
I doubt there are very many in America that are willing to risk their prime time shows and AOL chat line to change the way things are done around here...
Yet, the sacrifice it will take in the next generation just to pay the retirements of Baby Boomers on Social Security could bankrupt us all.
I want to go polly-anna, because I share your angst. I HATE where we're at, right now. As I posted in a different post, I've invested 20 years in the computer industry and I'm MAD AS HELL that a bunch of Indians and Chinese want to pretend they understand computers, make a bunch of promises, and take it away from us all.
But, like I said in the other post. I just don't see that there's a whole lot I can do about it, except save a bunch of money and batton down the hatches and expect a rough ride, if/when I ever lose my job. In the meantime, I have to work like hell to avoid being the "next layoff", even working weekends, if necessary to keep the income coming in.
I want a new Populist party. I want candidates who give a DAMN about AMERICA and AMERICANS! I want someone who cares enough about the citizens here to fund education programs. I want someone tough enough to tell a bunch of people feeding at the federal till to GET OUT, and to put most all of the government admin types on a budget diet. A want a budget that operates at a surplus for the next 20 years and pays down our huge trillion dollar federal debt. I want tariffs for foreign imports, based on working conditions, and pollution levels, and basically make imports taxed until they meet the same conditions factories are required to maintain in the U.S. Either that, or we repeal our pollution and labor laws, and we allow our factories to operate like those in China (I'm NOT in favor of that). I want our military out of Iraq and Liberia, and Afghanistan. I want power companies investing in windmills in Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas to generate power. I want us to collective use our brainpower to figure out that WE DON'T NEED SOME DAMN ARAB'S OIL, we can create electricity from the sea, the rivers, and from the wind.
Funny, I'm actually starting to want a single payer health care system, too. I don't like the government taking on the complete responsibility for healthcare, but I really do believe that for most people, the English and Canadian systems work better than the mess we have. The state governments are already paying so much healthcare, Medicaid, that we might as well nationalize it. I want patients under the new system to sign that they will not sue doctors, except for cases for gross negligence resulting in disability or death. If the patient wants the right to sue, then they need to visit a "private" doctor, and pay for the insurance costs.
I want every high school or college graduate to serve our country for 2 years, either in the military or in some service capacity (in veteran's hospitals, in low-income schools, as border guards, as auditors of private company books, working in IT for the government).
I want every executive's salary capped at about 1 million dollars per year, for base compensation. I want a 6 month minimum reporting period for companies (to stop this quarterly earnings insanity). I want the tax rate for persons making over 250 thousand per year to be 70% or 80%.
Do I want too much?