POST 1315
BROKEN NEWS!
Yesterday former Fox News host, now Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy fell just short of setting a new American record for delivering blame in the absence of any information. He blamed a contractor working on part of the Air Route Traffic Control system for the communication glitch that caused a ground stop of all commercial aircraft on Friday.
The fastest evidence-free blaming on record happened after the ICE killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis last winter. The then Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem required just a few hours to declare both Good and Pretti to be “domestic terrorists.” Later that day she posed for a photo-op wearing a $75,000 wrist watch and artificially puffed up lips in front of the Cecot torture prison holding wrongly accused, innocent American citizens.
In related action, the America public repudiated the administration in record breaking voting numbers demanding abstract concepts like truth, decency and competency. Several official administration spokespeople countered, saying, “Na-na, noo-noo, hunka-dunka, nya-nya, poo-poo.”
Many thanks to MZ for the pic.
We The People Won the Election. Now What?
It’s time to actually DO something.
If we really are to Build a Better America, we have to accomplish valuable stuff and live up to the ideals we espouse. It’s time to stop plodding along accomplishing little. It’s time to be BOLD AND TRANSFORMATIVE and remake America in the spirit of what was done 90 years ago.
We need vision and energy as bold as FDR’s to rekindle our American spirit. We need to reconnect to one another and to our country. We need to stop playing small. We need to stop being afraid of our own shadow.
It’s time to be America again: not with hollow slogans and lies; not by 
demonizing our neighbors; not by constantly flashing middle fingers or spewing the poison of toxic masculinity; not by smearing gold everywhere. We’ll do it by rolling up our shirtsleeves, working shoulder to shoulder and building great and wonderful things together again. That’s how we’ll Build a Better America. That’s how we’ll restore the American Dream.
Overheard in a political forum:
Don’t park the car in the driveway. Keep Driving.
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We Need a New “New Deal” To Build a Better America
Here are some ideas – there will have to be many more.
Mandatory National Service
We have no military draft. That has left us with no required connective tissue to learn to get along with and be productive with one another. We have few venues to build great civic involvement and improvement. I’m calling for a mandatory commitment of two years of service to our nation for every citizen. It could be military service or labor to improve our public schools. It could done in the Peace Corps or by building parks in blighted urban areas or any community project you can think of. We’ll do it together for the common good.
Healthcare: Establish an Extensive National Network of Health Clinics – Medicare For All On the Local Level
That will require building and supplying fast response, first response facilities. These will be built by Americans with American materials and know-how. They will be staffed by doctors, nurses and technicians each there to serve their Hippocratic oath and our nation with a minimum 2-year commitment.
A large majority of Americans want abortion to be safe and legal. Make it so.
A large majority of Americans (about 80%) want the right to own of guns to be truncated. For originalists, the Founders never considered Americans owning machine guns or RPGs or any modern warfare weapons. They had no money for a standing army and wanted civilians to be ready to defend the country in case the British came back. They aren’t coming, so it’s time to change the understanding of the Second Amendment to something that comports with today’s reality.
Stop the anti-vaccine idiocy. After having nearly eliminated measles – it took decades – 8 Americans have died of it this year alone and many hundreds are sick from it right now and it’s spreading. Let the anti-vaccination stupidity be a placeholder for all the self-defeating actions and policies of this administration. Let’s cut the Kennedy Neanderthal-Zombie crap. Do good medicine for all of us, always.
Create, Stock and Run Food Pantries in Every Poor Neighborhood
It’s nearly unthinkable that we let our poor suffer malnutrition; that we allow children, vets and old people to go hungry; that we let people fall to preventable disease caused by malnutrition; all this as we let farm production slump and grains rot in silos.
This is simple: feed the hungry.
For the devil Reagan spawn who will spout idiocy about non-existent “welfare queens”, make them work in a food pantry to serve those who are humiliated about having to take handouts. Make them go eye-to-eye with people whose children are hungry.
Get Us Off Fossil Fuels
We can sit on our hands doing nothing until lower Manhattan and half of Florida have become homes for ocean creatures or we can take action to stop making things worse. We can:
– Build a national network of high speed charging stations for electric vehicles as extensive as our present network of gas stations. That will require an army of builders working together across the nation.
– Incentivize the sale of electric vehicles.
– Penalize the sale of vehicles using fossil fuels.
– Same incentivize/penalize for other uses of fossil fuel, like home and commercial heating.
– Dramatically expand wind and solar power generation and fully upgrade our electric grid.
Massively Expand and Improve Public Education
Step one is to require a minimum of two semesters of civics education in order to graduate from high school. It’s time to end our civics ignorance, like that the vast majority of Americans are unable to name three presidents or the branches of government or understand due process.
Make undergraduate education tuition free, just as we do for grade schools and high schools so that we can successfully compete in this global economy. We should only do this if we don’t want to be crushed by an army of really smart, really well educated Chinese kids. Bonus: free tuition will mean that our kids won’t be saddled with unending, overpowering student debt and will be able to afford to have children and buy a house.
Create trade schools and a robust formal apprenticeship system.
Pay our teachers what they’re really worth – and they are worth a lot. Right now we trust our kids to teachers and then tell teachers via their paychecks that we really don’t think they’re very valuable. I’m going bold here: We don’t have to be this stupid and self-destructive. It’s time to pony up the bucks so teachers don’t have to have a second job, buy school supplies for their students and all the rest of the craziness.
End public money going to any – any – private education. For those who want private education for their children, enroll them and pay for it yourself. Plus you have to pay the portion of your taxes that goes to public education, just like the parents who send their kids to public school.
Which brings up another point: Develop a program to divorce public education funding from property taxes. That way we’ll stop perpetuating poorly educating our kids who live in less wealthy areas.
Most things like these will have to wait for the looming trifecta in 2029 in order to get started. But we can make Congressional Republicans go on record with their votes for the programs initiated by Democrats answering the call of We The People. Go ahead, Republicans; vote against helping your constituents. Let’s see what happens to you.
Please put some of your ideas for a New “New Deal” to Build a Better America in the Comments section below.
The American Dream
We don’t have a formal description of The American Dream. If we did it would surely include some of what’s above. I’d nominate well regulated capitalism to be in the description, too, along with a very progressive tax system that promotes people moving into the middle class. FDR did that and it ushered in decades of prosperity. Include a mentorship program that helps to develop the best in each of our kids so that they know what to strive for and how to do it. Ensure fairness that’s the same for every one of us.
Mostly, I think that the dream is about We The People and our individual and collective responsibilities to one another and to our nation. It’s about our limitless possibilities when we work together. It’s time for us to be that “Unum” thing we’ve heard about.
Must Watch
Rachel Maddow interviewed by Jon Stewart.
Veterans Day
Imagine you’re an 18 year old soon to graduate high school. You watched the ceremonies at Arlington National Cemetery last Wednesday. You saw the President of the United States lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in a cemetery with over 400,000 of our military interred there.
This five-times deferred President avoided military service during war time by having presented a note from his well paid physician during his pre-induction physical. The note claimed he had a bone spur that has never been found by an x-ray. It’s good to have a rich father.
Those buried in Arlington National Cemetery were patriots. And this President called them “suckers and losers.” This President said about them, “I don’t get it. What’s in it for them?”
This President ordered a war that resulted in blowing up little schoolgirls and schoolboys. And he wants you, high school graduate, to volunteer, to enlist in our military where you may one day be ordered to kill innocent children and then be viewed by him as a sucker or loser. 18 year old, you are supposed to believe that this Veterans Day was a sacred moment and somehow not be sickened by this President’s hypocrisy on display.
From the WayBack
Actor Paul Newman, a WW II Navy aviator, wrote a letter to his daughter, saying,
Wars should not be celebrated. The men who don’t come home deserve more than medals and platitudes. They deserve a world worth the trade.
That properly puts it on us to create that world. It is impossible for us to retire our debt to these patriots, but we can and we must continue to make the payments.
To the November 7, 2028 General Election
Mark your calendar.
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