Jello Biafra
OPEN LETTER TO BARACK OBAMA
PREAMBLE GAMBLE
Dear Mr. Obama,
Congratulations on your recent victory, and for helping build such a
strong mandate for change. In that spirit, please do not forget the
other aisle you need to reach across. All the relief and publicity for
the middle class won't do anything for the 40-100 million Americans who
are starving, unemployed or just plain poor.
You have gone out of your way to build a bridge to those of us fed
up with war, pollution, inequality, corporate lawlessness and business
as usual. You have energized a whole new generation who is far ahead of
their elders in knowing what urgently needs to be done. I have never
seen such an outpouring of heartfelt emotion, hope and support for an
American politician in my life, and I remember Kennedy well. You are
the first president in my lifetime to have a bona fide grassroots
movement behind you and ready to rock. I hope those crowds' hope and
urgency has penetrated deeply enough that you won't let that bridge be
washed away.
I remember another person who had the audacity to exploit and toss
aside people's hope, and his name is Bill Clinton. Democrats fail time
and again when they shirk responsibility and settle for being
dealmakers instead of leaders. As important as it is to find common
ground and build consensus for change, our situation is so dire we
cannot afford any more dealmakers. The people voted for a leader.
Anything less risks breaking the hearts of an entire galvanized
generation who may then decide it is not worth it to get involved and
participate any more.
Strong medicine is needed. Here are some ideas:
IRAQ – TRY THIS!
The closest thing to a solution I have heard was offered clear back
in April 2004 by the Organization of the Islamic Conference (www.oic-ico.org).
The OIC is comprised of 57 Islamic countries ranging from West Africa
clear over to Southeast Asia. At their annual meeting they found six
member nations (Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Yemen and
Morocco) willing to pony up enough of their own troops (approx.
150,000) that our troops could have gone home! Who slammed the door on
that one? Colin Powell, on the grounds that having the Islamic soldiers
under UN command instead of Americans was out of the question.
WHY??!? Wouldn't a neutral force of Muslim peacekeepers make a lot
more headway than the disaster we've made? Wouldn't they at least
command a lot more respect, resulting in a huge drop in violence?
Surely the non-stop carnage and Iracketeering we have spawned is
Exhibit A that we need to get over this colonialist illusion that other
countries' problems can only be solved by Americans. The OIC's proposal
for US withdrawal and peace in Iraq must be revisited immediately, and
also considered for Afghanistan.
We must end not just our military occupation of Iraq, but our
economic occupation NOW. Iraq is not ours to sell, and neither is its
oil. Your promise not to leave any permanent US military bases in Iraq
is a good start. But you have also backed leaving US troops in Iraq to
"protect American assets like the Green Zone." The Green Zone is not
our "asset." We stole it and we have to give it back. I hope you don't
seriously believe we can get away with that giant feudal fortress of an
embassy
we are building, ten times the size of any other in history. We cannot
afford to waste any more money on this, or down the black hole of the
Bush administration's crony backroom deals with corrupt, incompetent
private contractors like Blackwater, KBR and Halliburton. We need to
fire them and they need to leave—NOW.
We do owe the Iraqi people help, and we have an obligation to clean
up the mess we have made. That goes double for Afghanistan. But I can't
see this getting done unless someone other than the United States is in
charge. Let us also not forget the 2 million-plus refugees stuck outside Iraq who are draining the economies of Iraq's neighbors, especially Jordan and Syria.
TERROR – STRATEGY AND DIPLOMACY, NOT WAR
Even if we kill off every insurgent and terrorist-sympathizer from
sea to shining sea, what will their kids be like? And theirs? Wake up.
The major cause of terrorism is not evil, it's poverty. Michael Moore said it best after 9/11:
"Will we ever get to the point that we realize that we will be more
secure when the rest of the world isn't living in poverty so we can
have nice running shoes?" What do we need an empire for anyway? Ever
notice how much happier the British and Europeans are now that they
don't have to worry about policing colonial empires anymore?
Many experts and heads of state, in the Middle East and beyond,
agree that the best way by far to pull the rug out from under the
terrorists and reduce their attacks dramatically is a just and humane
resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel's right to exist
is threatened most by the fact that hardcore zealots are running the
show on both the Palestinian and Israeli sides. If we don't have the
courage to stand up to them, who will? As painful as withdrawal to
Israel's pre-1967 borders will be, our future depends on it. So does
Israel's. As Reagan said to Gorbachev, "Tear down this wall!"
Threatening Iran made for great red meat on the campaign trail. But
any attack on Iran—by us or using the Israelis as a proxy—will blow up
in our face worse than Iraq and Afghanistan combined. It will wipe out
any good will and benefit of a doubt we have left in the eyes of the
rest of the world. Iran is three times the size of Iraq and much more
mountainous. The people there already hate our guts, thanks to our
overthrow of their democratically elected leader Mohammed Mossadegh
in 1954, ushering in 25 years of torture under the Shah. Backing and
aiding Saddam Hussein in the eight-year Iran-Iraq war that cost a
million lives did not help either.
So, alas, we will not be "greeted as liberators." But we could run
straight into a worldwide "Day the Earth Stood Still" if Iran responds
by blocking all oil shipments out of the Persian Gulf. Iran knows full
well they wouldn't even have to blockade the narrow Strait of Hormuz.
All they would have to do is sink a tanker or freighter or two and no
other ships will move. Not from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab
Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq, nothing. Surely we can do better than
this. Even Robert Gates seems to think so. Reckless threats against
Pakistan will not solve anything, either.
JUST SAY NO TO TORTURE
Closing Guantanamo Bay is not enough. All torture, detentions without trial, kidnappings ("renditions") and illegal and unnecessary spying
must end—and end with transparency now. Otherwise we are no better than
Saddam Hussein or the Nazis. The whole world knows this and the whole
world is watching. What about the 20,000 people we still have locked up
without charge in Iraq, and thousands more in Afghanistan???
The USA PATRIOT Act
is just about the worst mistake our government has made since FDR threw
over 100,000 Japanese-American citizens into concentration camps during
World War II. Even you panicked and voted to make the PATRIOT Act
permanent. It should be repealed and flushed down the toilet
immediately—all of it. Even worse is the Military Commissions Act,
in which Senators who should know better, such as Robert Byrd, Sherrod
Brown, Ken Salazar and even John McCain voted with the majority to
legalize torture, kidnapping and secret trials with secret evidence,
wiping out the centuries old human right to habeas corpus. Again, isn't this what our "greatest generation" fought so bravely in World War II to stop the Nazis from doing to us?
What galls me most is that all this iron-fisted trashing of our
basic human rights has not caught and convicted one significant
terrorist! Even the FBI admits that torture doesn't work.
Meanwhile, if we're serious about preventing another terror attack,
why is only 10% of the cargo entering our ports on ships ever
inspected? Sure, no airliners have been hijacked by a terrorist
wielding the wrong-sized shampoo bottle. But those cargo containers are
big enough to smuggle in a small arsenal of rocket launchers and
shoulder-fired missiles that could actually bring down a plane; dirty
bomb material; or even Bin Laden himself. I sometimes wonder if he's
driving a cab in Manhattan right now.
RESTORE THE RULE OF LAW
This means investigating and prosecuting each and every Bush
administration official and their cronies who may have committed crimes
while in power. Otherwise the lesson learned is you can get away with
anything you want because the next administration will be too spineless
to take action. For crying out loud, DO NOT make the same mistake Bill
Clinton did when he let the rampant corruption, perjury and even
terrorist acts of the Reagan and Bush I regimes go unpunished in the
interest of moving on from the past. The crime here is this: Not only
does everyone involved assume they have license to break even more laws
the next time they hold power, but those who should be in jail for the
lying, arms smuggling, assassinations and drug dealing in the Contra-gate
scandal (like Elliot Abrams, Colin Powell, Richard Armitage and Robert
Gates among others) are instead handed even more powerful positions
where they have done even worse damage. Can you imagine the havoc and
hooliganism if we put our heads in the sand after Watergate, let
bygones be bygones, and G. Gordon Liddy wound up as director of the
FBI? Secretary of Defense Haldeman? Attorney General Ehrlichman? Karl
Rove's chair occupied by Colson, Magruder or Segretti?
Watergate and even Contra-gate pale in comparison to the wholesale lawlessness this time around. From Jack Abramoff's bribes, to outing Valerie Plame;
from lying about weapons of mass destruction and getting thousands of
people killed; from wholesale fraud and attacks on the right to vote,
to the gutting of the Justice Department, to torture and other possible
war crimes—this can't be allowed to go on.
Cheney and Rumsfeld were bad enough. But it is equally critical that lower-echelon culprits lacking household names like John Yoo, David Addington (nicknamed "Cheney's Cheney"), and General Geoffrey Miller
be held accountable for their alleged involvement in torture and other
serious crimes. Otherwise, they could one day rise to Attorney General,
Secretary of Defense, or even the Supreme Court and pick up right where
they left off in their blood-soaked shredding of the Constitution.
Even a South African-style Truth Commission would be an important
step in preventing this from ever happening again. Otherwise, why
should I or anyone else obey the law when my own government does not
even pretend to? Even if Bush pardons the most blatant war criminals,
all we have to do is fulfill President Clinton's promise to join the
rest of the world in the International Criminal Court and they might
not get away with it after all. We must come clean and drain the swamp
now or it is just going to get dirtier. A lot dirtier.
Rule of law must also be restored when it comes to the NSA, FISA
and domestic spying. The Internet revolt by your own followers was
right. Your vote for letting the NSA, and even the phone companies, off
the hook for massive illegal spying on American citizens was a very bad
mistake. These are the exact same crimes that got Nixon thrown out of
office for Watergate. Now Watergate is legal too? I have to say it—this
doesn't remind me of Nixon as much as Italy's ordeal under Silvio Berlusconi.
In Italy I have heard the joke again and again that "Berlusconi has to
stay in power or else he'll go to jail." Sure enough, every time
Berlusconi gets indicted for yet another crime, his majority in
Parliament simply changes the law and he goes free. There should be
zero tolerance for Berlusconi disease.
Plus, does this much spying even make sense? What are we gaining
here besides a bigger avalanche of useless data? If 9/11 was an inside
job, it was not one of conspiracy but colossal, runaway incompetence.
We were already spying on way too many people, collecting way too much
data that no one had time to analyze. Thus finding the real terrorists
before they struck was like looking for a needle in a football stadium.
I have a feeling you may sign an important bill or two right from
the podium during your inauguration speech. It might be an economic
stimulus package or lifting the ban on stem cell research. How about
also signing your first executive order declaring all of Bush's
presidential signing statements he added on to bills he signed to be null and void. These things will go a long way toward restoring the rule of law.
STAMP OUT ELECTION FRAUD – RESTORE THE RIGHT TO VOTE
I never thought that after all these years we would once again find
ourselves fighting for our right to vote. In the United States of
America? It is well-established now that every election at least since
2000, including the midterms, has been marred by widespread vote fraud,
especially via the hacking and manipulations of electronic voting
machines. But these widespread crimes have never been fully
investigated, let alone prosecuted. Even the US Civil Rights Commission
recommended
prosecuting then-Governor Jeb Bush over all the fraud and voter
intimidation in Florida during the 2002 election. But his brother's
Justice Department declined.
It is obvious the Help America Vote Act has backfired
and done the opposite. Optical scan machines are not the answer at all.
They have now been proven to be just as hackable as the notorious
paperless touch-screens. They should all be junked once and for all.
Digital is not always better, and voting should not be privatized. Any
system where the people's votes are counted in secret behind closed
doors has no place in a democracy. Nor is there room for contracting
out the verification of our registration forms to the same corrupt
biased companies that manufacture the phony voting machines.
We can't just let this massive, widespread vote stealing go on and
pretend it isn't happening. It may be too late to reverse the wreckage
of all the stolen elections. But again, a Truth Commission to prove how
it was done and who did it is essential to the survival of our
democracy. Anyone in Congress with a spine for this? The people have a
right to know.
CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM – THE EASY WAY
I am sure you would agree that this election campaign was way WAY
too long. Other countries, including one just north of us, limit
campaign time to between 30 and 60 days. Election fever is much more
focused so voter participation is higher. Why can't we do this? Sure,
these other countries use parliamentary systems (another change I hope
for) where the party in power calls an election and it takes place a
short time later. But think of what we could save—and what we would
gain—if we limited campaign time to 90 days. There could be 30 days
between announcements and the primaries, followed by a 30-day primary
season, then a 30-day home stretch to Election Day. Anyone who jumps
the gun by jockeying, soliciting contributions or electioneering too
early is automatically disqualified.
I hope you would also agree that campaigns for high office have
become obscenely expensive. We now have a full-blown Election
Industrial Complex. Wouldn't it be great if you didn't need $750
million to run for President? The way our campaign contributions and
lobbyists work today has another name in other countries. It's called
bribery.
Another way to restore sanity is to go national with a law enacted
by popular vote in Nevada. If you don't like any of the candidates for
an office in Nevada, you are allowed to vote None of the Above. If N.O.T.A. wins, they have to re-run the election with all new candidates.
You say you want more people to get up and get involved? Lower the
voting age! To get people's attention I have suggested lowering it
clear down to age 5. But more realistically, I suggest showing people
they have a stake in our democracy by allowing ages 14 and up to vote
on school boards and school bond issues, 16 and up for local offices
and ballot measures, and 18 and up for everything else. Overcoming
voter apathy is hard, but when young people cast votes and see results,
they'll stick with it long term.
RETHINK AND SHUT DOWN THE WAR ON DRUGS
Prohibition is as absurd and fruitless today as it was when Eliot
Ness ran around shooting up Chicago trying to stamp out illegal beer.
The world is laughing at us while real people are being robbed, jailed,
assaulted and even killed. We have more people locked in prison than
any country in the history of the world. But our drug use rate has
barely dropped at all. The blood and violence from gangs and
narco-traffickers that have left Colombia and Mexico on the verge of becoming failed states is spilling across our borders. This is no country for old men—or old laws.
Could we do worse than to at least try the Harm Reduction programs used most successfully in Holland
and other parts of Europe? As unorthodox as this sounds,
decriminalizing (not legalizing) even harder drugs, making them
available on prescription from the government for free, along with a
safe place to use them, has led to a much lower crime rate—and even
addiction rate—than ours. Why? The free prescriptions mean the addict
does not have to rob and kill people to pay the drug gangs' high
prices, and the gangs are put out of business. Dealers are still
treated harshly and rehab is strongly encouraged. This could also save
up to $50 billion a year for rehab and education that is otherwise
wasted by throwing people in prison.
This also frees up billions and billions of dollars to treat the
addicts when they want to get off drugs—which will be sooner rather
than later. Rehab costs 2/3 less than prison. Our mushrooming
prison-industrial complex is draining our money so badly that state
after state is slashing funds for education—education!—to pay for
throwing more and more people in prison. In California, a prison guard
now makes more money than a teacher. So much for family values.
What is wrong with this picture?!??? As president I suggest the
commuting of federal prison sentences of all small-time non-violent
drug offenders to time served and releasing them immediately. Then
strongly urge governors to do the same at the state level. Again, think
of all the wasted taxpayer dollars this will free up for more important
things like education and rehabilitation. Estimates run as high as $50 billion nationwide.
This does not mean any of these drugs should be legalized, just
decriminalized. That is, strictly regulated like alcohol and tobacco,
with big-time dealers and gangs treated as harshly as ever. For another
way to fight the drug lords, consider this. In 2005 the United States
spent $780 million
on drug eradication in Afghanistan. Where on earth did it all go? It
worked so poorly that $600 million of poppies and heroin escaped into
the market anyway.
Do the math: We could have saved a whopping $180 million if we had
simply gone to the suppliers and bought the drugs, and then destroyed
them so they won't keep making people sick and killing my friends. As
sickening as it is to even think of doing business with drug cartels,
can anyone think of a better way to cut off the supply? A
counter-argument is that this will actually force the gangs to drive
the street price way up. But with Harm Reduction programs already in
place they will have nothing to sell, no place to sell it, and no
suckers willing to buy.
And for crying out loud, isn't it time to finally get real and
decriminalize marijuana? If current strains are more potent than the
old days, so what? Study
after study still proves that marijuana is less harmful—and less
addictive—than alcohol or tobacco. Nowadays, going overboard against
marijuana has not only flooded our prisons to the breaking point, it
has driven the price of cannabis so high that young people are going
straight into crack cocaine and methamphetamines. Is this wise?
On top of that, it is not just oil we are dangerously low on, we are
running out of wood. If we ever hope to turn the tide on global warming
and save what is left of our forests, we must remove all bans on the
cultivation of cannabis for its many industrial uses—including the
strain of hemp that has no THC in it to get anyone high but is still
banned anyway. Recycling is not enough. Why chop down millions of trees
to make paper when we can use hemp or kanaf and then grow another crop
of paper a few months later? It does not get any greener than this. It
will also help rescue a lot of family farms.
Finally, the Joe Biden-authored Illicit Drug Anti-Proliferation Act
(formerly known as the RAVE Act), passed as a rider to the Amber Alert
Bill, is as big a disgrace as the PATRIOT Act. It has no place in a
free society and should be repealed immediately. Long-term rescue of
our social fabric and society, not to mention our southern neighbors,
depends in major part on enacting humane drug laws.
RESTORE BALANCE TO THE SUPREME COURT
Even George Will complained that Bill Clinton's Supreme Court
nominees were too moderate; that the court needs a good progressive or
two for the full and thorough consideration of each issue. Balancing
the court means choosing a justice or two with the passion and spirit
of a Thurgood Marshall, John Marshall or William O. Douglas, even if
you do not fully agree with them. You may only have a two-year window
before a mid-term Congress cramps your style.
MEDIA REFORM
The Federal Communications Commission should get off their high
horse about Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" or naughty words
that everyone says anyway, and instead focus on the rampant hate speech
and outright lies that are falsely broadcast as impartial news. Sure,
celebrity bullies like Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck, and Ann
Coulter have a right to say what they want. But when no one—even the
target of a personal attack—is allowed the right to reply, the very
idea of an informed democracy goes out the window. Was that their goal
in the first place?
Nowadays, mainstream corporate media deliberately dumbing down the
news, omitting key facts and sides of the story, or neglecting to
report the story altogether is the worst form of censorship going on in
America today. Since the big mergers, most debate that gets aired at
all is restricted to right wing versus ultra-right wing, while the rest
of us are allowed to laugh along with Stewart and Colbert. What kind of
democracy are we when freedom of speech—or the equally important right
to communicate—belongs only to the oligarchs who control the airwaves?
There used to be a law called the Fairness Doctrine
that guaranteed the right of reply, without Bill O'Reilly yelling at
you to shut up every 15 seconds. It was allowed to expire late in the
Reagan years, and urgently needs to be renewed. Your stated opposition
to this puzzles me. What better tool is there for "opening up the
airwaves and modern communications to as many diverse viewpoints as
possible" than making sure they are allowed to be seen and heard in the
first place? And how about some enforcement of the laws guaranteeing
that the public, not corporations, owns the airwaves. Even the big
corporate media barons should again be required to renew their FCC
license to broadcast every five years, complete with public hearings.
I also do not think anyone should be allowed to graduate from high
school until they pass a class on media literacy. Sadly, we do not yet
have the curriculum. In the meantime we must all pitch in with the
teaching—to both adults and children.
ECONOMIC STIMULUS – START WITH PEOPLE WHO NEED IT MOST
I'm glad there seems to be a sense up top that national security,
the economy, climate collapse and the environment are all intertwined.
Think about it. No rogue state or terrorist threatens our national
security nearly as much as our collapsing economy. The growing gap
between the rich and poor is what is tearing apart the lives of average
Americans and their families.
National security means:
• Everyone has a home.
• Everyone has enough decent food to eat.
• Everyone can drink the water without having to buy it in a bottle from Coke or Pepsi.
• No one has to worry about getting their hand cut off at work or having their job outsourced overseas.
• Everyone can be who they are without fear of being detained and tortured without trial.
• Everyone can vote without fear, knowing their vote will be counted—accurately.
• Every woman has the right to choose what to do with her own body.
• Everyone has enough money for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
• Everyone, even if they don't have money, has the right to see a
doctor if they're sick or hurt. In so many other countries this is a
guaranteed human right by law.
Stimulating and reviving the economy will only succeed from the
ground up. This means getting a lot more money quickly to the people on
the bottom who need it the most. When they finally have some cash in
their pocket they will be more than eager to spend it. Stores perk up,
jobs are saved, and the train is finally rolling out of the station.
This is why leaders as diverse as Martin Luther King, Milton Friedman
and even Richard Nixon
have at different times proposed a guaranteed annual income so that
everyone can participate and keep our economy humming. Raise the
minimum wage to a living wage: $9.50 an hour helps, but $12 an hour is
closer to a true living wage. Welfare should not be a dirty word,
especially after PBS reported last month that if you count all the
Americans who have given up looking for work because they can't find
any and dropped off the radar screen, unemployment is actually around
12%! So please remove the time limits on unemployment compensation,
welfare benefits and Aid to Families with Dependent Children that were
slapped on the least fortunate during the Clinton years.
But where will the money come from when we burn it all up shoveling
it down the mouths of the dragons on Wall Street? You are right to
point out that trickle-down supply-side economics never trickled down.
It wasn't supposed to. How will this be any different? To the average
taxpayer this so-called bailout looks more like the last great looting
of our treasury before Bush and his cronies get the hell out of dodge.
There is also growing concern about the appearance of self-dealing by officials with connections to Goldman Sachs and Citigroup.
So far your own economic team seems alarmingly slanted toward the
robber barons who helped create this mess in the first place. Where is Joseph Stiglitz? Where is Robert Reich?
Are we still all in this together? Your Economic Advisory Council is
supposed to be a council, not a choir! You say you want a support staff
that debate and give you diverse ideas. So even if you do not agree
with them, how about adding William Greider or Doug Henwood or even Naomi Klein as well?
GREEN JOBS THROUGH GREEN AID
Let's move even faster on climate collapse. The clock is ticking…
Your proposal to spend $150 billion on our crumbling infrastructure
is a good beginning. But it is only 10% of the $1.5 trillion in urgent
repairs the American Society of Civil Engineers says
we need right now to avoid more disasters like the freeway bridge
collapse in Minnesota. This does not even account for restocking the
Bush-depleted Superfund to clean up toxic waste, or creating affordable
housing for everyone. Your plan states, "We'll put people back to work
rebuilding our roads and bridges, modernizing schools that are failing
our children and building wind farms and solar panels, fuel efficient
cars and the alternative energy technology that could free us from our
dependence on foreign oil and keep our economy competitive in the years
ahead." Therefore, it makes a lot of sense to spend whatever it takes
to weather-strip and winterize old homes and buildings now if the
owners can't afford it. It will reduce our swollen carbon footprint
dramatically and save tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars over
the next few years. How about aid for solar panels? Home windmills too?
Not just tax breaks, aid. Most people just don't have the money for
this. Time magazine reported in 2001
that an American farmer could get $50 for an acre of wheat and $2000
for an acre of wind power. We either pay to do this now or pay a lot
more later. Europeans are already way ahead of us on this one.
Also, look for ways to accomplish two or three things at once with
every renewal project. Replacing the water or sewer lines? Lay fiber
optic cable! Our not-so-liberal mayor in San Francisco, Gavin Newsom,
nixed that idea because there was not enough graft in it for telecom
companies. His own silly plan for wi-fi towers fell on its face, so a
smart opportunity was wasted.
AUTO AID – REQUIRE GREENER CARS
Ever seen a documentary film called Who Killed the Electric Car?
They worked so well their owners did not want to give them back. But
when their leases came up, Detroit snatched them away and destroyed
them. Now Detroit wants a great big handout? Then another? Then
another? There should be no bailout for carmakers if all they are
willing to offer in return is more fuel-hogging clunkers like the Ford
Flex. No aid until they bring back the electric cars! If the Chevy Volt
is so great, why aren't they selling them now? For almost 30 years,
people who go to design schools have told me that the car designers
almost always pursue jobs overseas because Detroit is still unable to
adapt as quickly to fresh ideas for the future.
So far "clean coal"
seems to be about as clean as our mountains of "clean nuclear waste."
Again, no aid to big coal companies unless they end their
environmentally devastating "mountain top removal" plundering once and for all.
TRAINS MAKE SENSE – PEOPLE ARE READY
Another crucial way to fight global warming and reduce our
dependence on foreign oil is to wake up and get serious about a
nationwide high-speed rail system and better rapid transit in the
cities. Again, Europe, Japan, and even China are way ahead of us. When
I do my speaking tours in Europe it is so much easier and less
expensive than traveling here: Just take my backpack and go. Even a
normal train is often faster than flying. No traffic jams getting to
the airport, no long security lines, no baggage claim wait, no traffic
jams back into the next town. I just get on the train and get off the
train, right downtown. The scenery is pretty cool too.
Amtrak has hemorrhaged money year after year. But ridership is
finally going up, in spite of the decimated service. People have
finally grown so fed up with traffic jams, fuel prices and the
arrogance of our bumbling airline industry that a proper train system
would now do very well. Just ask former Salt Lake City mayor Rocky
Anderson, another intriguing choice for a high position in your
administration. Californians finally passed a bond issue to begin work
on a long-overdue bullet train system
between San Francisco Bay and Los Angeles. People I have talked to in
random conversation are almost as excited about this as they are about
your own election. A similar initiative passed in Florida in 2000, but
Governor Jeb Bush impounded the funds.
Surely we can find the money by canceling a few aircraft carriers,
tanks and planes we don't need, and by shutting off the faucet for the
hundreds of billions wasted
on Reagan's star wars fantasy—now known as "missile defense." Are those
new installations in the Czech Republic and Poland really worth all the
grief they're stirring up with the Russians? The Czech and Polish
people don't even want them there!
Green energy technology should also be shared, even given, to the
Chinese ASAP. Here on the West Coast I have to wipe a brown sooty film
off my windshield every couple of days—and my car is in a garage! It is
coal dust from Chinese factories. They open a new coal plant ever few
days. According to Mother Jones,
sustaining an American lifestyle for a Chinese middle class predicted
to reach 600 million will require the resources of several more Earths!
COMPETE GLOBALLY – TAKE BETTER CARE OF OUR PEOPLE
Other countries prefer a healthy workforce and are willing to pay
for it. Here we stick our workforce with fat, greedy insurance
companies who serve no purpose but to act as a tollbooth or a
gatekeeper and charge exorbitant fees before a person can even see a
doctor. The result, of course, is the most expensive healthcare system
with the least benefit for the buck of any in the industrialized world.
You say the big insurance companies "should have a place at the table."
Aren't these companies the problem?
Other counties want their workforce to be as well-educated as
possible to better care for themselves and compete in the global
economy. So they are willing to pay to make sure this happens, instead
of kicking them in the face with back-breaking student loans and
cutting school funding to the bone.
Other countries want their children to grow up well-nourished and
loved instead of dysfunctional. They are happy to pay welfare for
single parents to stay home with their little ones, and for 12-18
months maternity leave with 80-90% pay for either parent to make sure no child is left behind.
Traveling overseas it is not hard to notice that many European
countries, and not just Scandinavia, have a higher standard of living
than we do, and the gap is widening. The reason is they are willing to
pay for it.
HUMANE TAX REFORM
Please do not break your promise to raise income taxes on the
wealthy and close those Titanic-sized loopholes that allowed two-thirds
of US and foreign corporations who do business here to pay no tax at
all between 1998 and 2005. We used to have a tiny tax on security
speculation and stock transactions. Britain still does. If the annual
amount of wheeling and dealing in the stock market really amounts to
the reported $500 trillion a year, a mere 1% tax
could raise $5 trillion per year and Wall Street would not even feel
it! Other ways to raise badly needed revenue without hurting Joe the
Plumber would be to tax companies who pollute, divert funds overseas,
and ship jobs out of the country, as well as taxing stock windfalls
rewarded by Wall Street for balancing the bottom line with employee
layoffs.
Last September the Bush administration quietly dynamited
Section 382 of the tax code allowing big banks to run off with as much
as $140 billion dollars in new tax breaks that many suspect are
illegal. Was this illegal? Please enforce the law and stop the bleeding
now.
We could also follow the lead of Berlin, Moscow, Beijing, and even the state of Maine and encourage cities to start their own municipal or community banks.
Being a non-profit, these banks would provide low-cost loans for homes
and small businesses. They would also save cities millions of dollars
apiece that they now waste on private banking fees.
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D - IL) proposes
generous tax breaks and shareholder advantages to "patriotic
corporations" who limit management salaries to 100 times the
lowest-paid fulltime worker. I think 10 times is better. Shareholders
need better legal tools to limit runaway CEO pay and looting by top
executives.
Schakowsky would also give tax breaks to corporations that: produce
at least 90% of their goods and services in the United States; spend at
least 50% of the research and development budgets here at home; stay
out of employee organizing drives; are clean with the EPA, OSHA and the
NRLB; and provide their employees with generous and portable pension
funds and health insurance. They must also agree not to price-gouge
consumers.
So how do we convince Americans that it is in our best interest to
help pay for all of this? It would help if you use your power to
inspire and persuade, to get through to people in this country that not
all taxes are automatically bad, especially when spent in a way that
benefits them directly. Starting with the Boston Tea Party in
kindergarten, it is drilled into us that taxes are this terrible
violation of our freedom. As adults we have had 30 plus years of media
sermons from both parties that we are no longer a community, but a
marketplace, and that competitiveness is more important than caring
about one another. Isn't it interesting that the people least
interested in paying taxes are often the first to complain when a government service they take for granted doesn't work any more?
To wise people up and chip away at this I suggest pointing out what happened to California when voters passed Proposition 13
and gutted what was once the number one education system in the
country, if not the world. It is now almost dead last. According to the
ACLU, some schools in Los Angeles are not only short on books and
desks, they don't even have toilet paper.
Californians also voted down an initiative guaranteeing universal
healthcare after the Disease Industry ran a blitz of TV ads claiming it
would raise people's taxes. They banked on people failing to do the
math and see how a slight tax increase would dramatically reduce their
own medical bills.
Another example is the tale of two of the Quad Cities on the
Mississippi River. In the 1990s, Rock Island, IL voters were willing to
raise taxes to build a floodwall. Voters in Davenport, IA rejected a
wall three times because it would raise taxes. Guess whose town was devastated
the next time the Mississippi flooded? To raise local money for local
and state projects voters have to be shown that it is worth raising
taxes to pay for these things.
Taxes also wouldn't hurt so much if the people had more say in where
their money went. How about placing 12-15 categories in US income tax
forms so people can vote what percentage of their tax money they want
spent where? I'll bet education, the environment, infrastructure, and
services would go straight up and our bloated military cash cow would
go straight down.
HELP PEOPLE RESIST FORECLOSURES
To fight the plague of foreclosures, I suggest following the lead of the Cook County Sheriff in Chicago by declaring
a moratorium on foreclosure evictions. Debts to predatory lenders
should be forgiven at once. Many families are fleeing their homes
because they are so frightened of the cruel Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, they are willing to default
on their mortgage just to keep up with their credit card debts. You
voted against this law. Now let's get rid of it. I am inspired by City Life/Vida Urbana in Boston who have said "Yes We Can" to reviving the Depression-era practice
of volunteer rolling brigades who show up to defend people's homes from
eviction, and if need be take all the furniture and belongings back
from the curb into the house. In addition, they alert the media to help
shame the banks and predatory lenders from coming back. In many cases
it has worked.
The most intriguing proposal flying around the Internet is for
everyone who files an individual tax return to be given $1 million
dollars on the condition that they use it to pay off their mortgage in
full (thus bailing out the banks) and buy an American car within the
next three years. Whatever is left over is theirs to keep and invest.
Unfortunately the math does not add up. Even the staggering estimated
total of $8 trillion
thrown at our collapsing economy would only bring $57,971.01 for each
of the 138 million individual tax returns filed each year. Too bad, it
is an interesting idea.
"THIS MOVEMENT IS NOT JUST ABOUT ONE PERSON…"
I'm glad to hear you say that, but I keep waiting for you to expand
and take it further. To point out how much it also matters who is in
the Senate, who is in the House, the Governor, the State legislature,
mayors, city councils, school boards, ballot initiatives, county
commissioners, you name it. To say that if a person is not satisfied
with what is going on in their community, they should get involved. If
they are not satisfied with how they are being represented, they should
consider running for office themselves. A lot of inspired people would.
What else can we do in the meantime to make things better? What simple,
easy steps can we take in our own lives? You have two more
chances—Inauguration and the State of the Union. Before people return
to the slumber of Soundbite McNews.
Bill Clinton could have won back Congress in 1996 if he had used his
popularity, convention speech and pulpit for something besides his own
shoo-in re-election. But he didn't. I was in the room for Al Gore's
acceptance speech in 2000. He didn't bother either. It was just about
one person.
I'll be amazed if Mr. Obama or anyone close actually reads this, so
this last part is for you folks who have. To me, if there is an Obama
movement, it is more like the Pope-mobile.
You know, that cage of bulletproof glass on wheels that rolls around
with the Pope inside, waving at his adoring flock, "Yo! I'm here! Look
at me, I'm the Pope!" Then everybody goes home. But who is driving the
Pope-mobile? Can a crowd organize to block the wrong turns and steer it
in a better direction?
I did not vote for you, but I dearly want you to succeed at
delivering the change you have promised. We have very little time and
may not get another chance. Recent history shows we have eight years
maximum before the pendulum swings back the other way—and hard. She may
lose once or twice, but I fear the Pitbull with Lipstick will one day
be bigger than Reagan.
In many ways, people seem to be looking to you as their new
great-and-powerful Oprah as much as they look at you as their
President. This can be useful too. To revive people's sense of
community and what it entails. To persuade people that voting for small
local tax increases brings much greater benefits for everyone down the
road. To encourage people to not just recycle but look for ways to stop
wasting so much. Those same European countries whose standard of living
seems to be higher than ours use a fraction per capita of natural
resources we do. How do they do it? Think of all the forests we could
save just by showing people how much paper they can save just by
writing on the other side before they throw it away? Imagine if lawyers
figured this out.
HONOR AND RESPECT YOUR MOVEMENT
Please don't ever forget why so many people who had given up hope
are investing so much of their hearts and hope in you. If that hope is
shattered and they feel betrayed, a great deal more will collapse for
good.
So to keep your movement alive—and help it grow beyond you—keep
those texts and e-mail lists alive! Keep your Blackberry. Does it
matter if it all becomes public record? How about a posting a daily log
of what you did and who you and your staff met with, including
lobbyists. Why not keep all those campaign offices you opened all over
the country alive too? Convert them to branch offices. Senators and
House members have branch offices all over their districts. You now
represent the whole country. Keep the branches.
Above all, be a leader, not a dealmaker. There are times when
cutting a deal is the same as cutting and running. To put it mildly, we
can't afford that anymore. There are no sails left to trim.
And if this is a movement about change and not just about one
person, it is up to the movement to drive the President, not the other
way around. Please do not stand in the way.
Sincerely,
Jello Biafra