What the Next President Should Do
Well, we're awash in Obama-mania now, unless you happen to be a Hilary fan, in which case you're likely enraged, disillusioned, or both. But even if you're skeptical of the Illinois Senator's bona fides, it's hard to deny that he brings a palpable sense of hope for a brighter tomorrow. Hope, after all, is conditional -- it may or may not be fulfilled. And while John McCain and his campaign are holding their own right now (if you believe the polls, which I don't), I think it's only a matter of time before the senior gentleman from Arizona fades away. The country is just too ready for wholesale change to elect another old white guy who preaches war and tax cuts for the rich.
But is all the Obama hype worth it? Can he lead us to the promised land? Unfortunately, I doubt it. The President, after all, is just one person, and the challenges we face are epic and systemic. And while I have no doubt that a President Obama will make some great strides in foreign policy, tax relief for the middle class, and possibly national health care, the emerging larger-scale problems will grind any piecemeal improvements into dust before too long. Unless our national leaders, especially the President, are willing to tell some unvarnished, unpleasant truths about the future of our basic social form, we will continue on our downward trajectory into what James Howard Kunstler calls "The Long Emergency."
So what should the new President do? What policies could realistically be put in place to move the country in some small way towards reduced consumption, controlled economic contraction, re-localized power, and collective social forms? I know the kinds of things that I would like to see us try, but these are light years away from what a President could attempt. Remember that anyone who gets to the office of President has already been vetted, filtered, focus-grouped, and run through the fundraising meat grinder. Any semblance of bold idea or radical thought has been pounded out of our national leaders by a corporate media that rarely rises above the level of flag lapel pin placement or too-loud debate sighing, as well as an absolutely addle-brained American populace, which somehow just "can't get a sense for what these guys are all about," despite torrents of books, articles, websites, and television coverage about just those things. (And don't get me started on the undecided voters, those ridiculous chumps who could probably recite decades of NFL rushing leaders or season after season of American Idol runner-ups, but who are absolutely mystified on the Monday night before the election as to who "in their heart" they really believe in. These people should NOT have the privilege of voting.)
Anyway, what could a newly minted President Obama get away with as a realistic laundry list for his first 100 days? What proposals would move us towards significant change but somehow still pass the Slim-Jim sensitive sniff test of Joe Lunchbox and Sally Punchclock? These are my suggestions:
But is all the Obama hype worth it? Can he lead us to the promised land? Unfortunately, I doubt it. The President, after all, is just one person, and the challenges we face are epic and systemic. And while I have no doubt that a President Obama will make some great strides in foreign policy, tax relief for the middle class, and possibly national health care, the emerging larger-scale problems will grind any piecemeal improvements into dust before too long. Unless our national leaders, especially the President, are willing to tell some unvarnished, unpleasant truths about the future of our basic social form, we will continue on our downward trajectory into what James Howard Kunstler calls "The Long Emergency."
So what should the new President do? What policies could realistically be put in place to move the country in some small way towards reduced consumption, controlled economic contraction, re-localized power, and collective social forms? I know the kinds of things that I would like to see us try, but these are light years away from what a President could attempt. Remember that anyone who gets to the office of President has already been vetted, filtered, focus-grouped, and run through the fundraising meat grinder. Any semblance of bold idea or radical thought has been pounded out of our national leaders by a corporate media that rarely rises above the level of flag lapel pin placement or too-loud debate sighing, as well as an absolutely addle-brained American populace, which somehow just "can't get a sense for what these guys are all about," despite torrents of books, articles, websites, and television coverage about just those things. (And don't get me started on the undecided voters, those ridiculous chumps who could probably recite decades of NFL rushing leaders or season after season of American Idol runner-ups, but who are absolutely mystified on the Monday night before the election as to who "in their heart" they really believe in. These people should NOT have the privilege of voting.)
Anyway, what could a newly minted President Obama get away with as a realistic laundry list for his first 100 days? What proposals would move us towards significant change but somehow still pass the Slim-Jim sensitive sniff test of Joe Lunchbox and Sally Punchclock? These are my suggestions:
1) End the occupation of Iraq as soon as possible. I know, this is fairly obvious. But we'll really need those financial and manpower resources for the next policy plank below. Oh, and by the way, Obama should start calling the Iraq imbroglio an "occupation" instead of a "war," and he should do so relentlessly and consistently -- and he should start right now. We all should. To call the situation over there a war just plays into the hands of hawkish guys like McCain, who have nothing else to run on except war, fear, and conflict. Calling it an occupation captures the seedy and illegal nature of the whole affair much better.
2) Announce a National Sustainable Energy project, spearheaded by military personnel and resources freed up from the end of the Iraq occupation. Troops will return home, fan out across the country, and work with local communities everywhere to build renewable, decentralized power plants: wind, solar, geothermal, wave power, whatever. As these power plants come on line, they will then be converted over to municipalities, locally owned and operated. One of the major blind-spots in the current rage over sustainable energy generation is ownership structure. This is epitomized by the current plan floated by T. Boone Pickens, the billionaire who would be America's windblown savior. At first, you think, "yeah, what a great guy, wanting to get us off of the foreign oil teat." But then you realize that he stands to make more loot by capturing the lion's share of the profits gleaned from the wind farms and natural gas companies that he himself owns. Many lefties seem to think, admittedly spurred on by the irresponsible rhetoric of Democrats, that green energy means wonderful new jobs for everyone. We'll all be wind-turbine technicians, or solar array adjusters, or whatever. But if green energy just means the emergence of huge corporations that happen to control solar and wind instead of gas and oil, then we will have done nothing to address the fundamentally unjust concentration of power itself. It does us no good if people switch over from working for $7 an hour at WalMart to $7.50 at a solar energy plant. The form of ownership itself must change, with control being returned to communities and localities. That is why a drive to build decentralized power plants by using the military as the vanguard makes so much sense. If Obama tries to do a huge, expensive energy project using the Department of Energy or some other government bureaucracy, it will be a non-starter; the conservatives would shout it down as an evil of Big Guvmint. But if it is done through the military itself, and through (God forbid) some of the same hated contractors currently under hire, then it can be painted as the most important Defense project in our nation's history. It can be portrayed as playing good offense as the ultimate best defense. The more self-sufficient we are, the safer we are, and the less entangled we get in terrorist-plagued areas of the world. It's a no-brainer.
3) Announce huge federal tax-breaks to lending institutions that develop new forms of collective finance, like cooperative mortgages and community development loans. Right now, the lending skids are greased for individuals, couples, families, and small, single businesspeople. But not surprisingly, personal bankruptcies and small business failures are rampant, and will certainly get much worse. As mentioned in many earlier posts, the American Algorithm is finished, and it will be unable to bear the strain of economic inequality, job insecurity, soaring commodity costs, and the ill-effects of globalization. This situation will continue, and more people will slide into complete poverty, unless something radical is done to grease the financial skids for collective borrowing and lending. This might be a hard sell, but clever speech writers can certainly spin this as a return the great American sense of community and cooperation, lifting lines from "It's a Wonderful Life" as needed.
4) Announce partnerships with all major cities to reform landowner taxation policies. Many desirable city sites waste away unoccupied, because the tax laws make it more profitable to take depreciation credits as opposed to simply lowering their rental rates. Owners are thus rewarded, or at least not heavily penalized, for leaving urban plots empty. This should be drastically reversed. Lots that remain unoccupied should be heavily taxed, or perhaps even seized by city governments and donated to community groups who will use the places for their own local needs. A natural companion to this plan would be to relax city zoning and licensing regulations, to allow different types of economic activity to take place without onerous red tape and endless bureaucratic hurdles.
5) Propose legislation to decriminalize marijuana, and to empty the prisons of nonviolent drug offenders. The huge prison population is the most overlooked part of America's economic collapse. We have more people in prison than any other civilized country in the world, and it's not even close. And this is not a cultural problem, or a racial problem, or a morality problem. Think of the prison population as simply another huge swath of unemployed, the extreme effect of our funneling money upwards for the last 40 years. Criminals are just an economic underclass, trying to make ends meet via illegitimate means because all legitimate pathways have been closed down. We have to put these people somewhere, so we criminalize conspicuous but ultimately insignificant acts: smoking weed, robbing stores, etc. Then we produce ridiculous morality plays like the show COPS, where redneck thugs who happened to go to high schools that had post-1970 textbooks preach to poorer rednecks and blacks who have likely been living grown-up life on the streets since age five. These prisons need to be emptied out, and the government should, as suggested above, offer huge tax incentives to lending institutions that provide collective loans with good terms to ex-cons who want to return to their communities and do something valuable.
Well, that's all I have for now. That should be enough to keep Obama busy for a few months. I don't think there's anything above that is truly outrageous. And a good Karl Rovian figure could produce appealing rhetorical frameworks for any of these. You might notice that I did leave universal health care off of there. I figured that topic has gotten enough play in other places, so you can research as you like. It would certainly be a necessary addition to my list. Basically, I think the next President is in trouble, be it Obama or (gulp) McCain. The age of easy slogans and temporary downturns is over. I do not think there is another bubble out there to prop up a collapsing culture and economy, like Dot Coms and inflated real estate did for the last couple decades. We are certainly looking at terminal, slow, wrenching decline and contraction, with the real possibility of sudden ecological catastrophe. We're not going to paper over these problems with job programs, tax credits, or school vouchers. We need to fundamentally change our social form, and the suggestions for the new President, listed above, are but one possible jumping off point for the discussion.
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