Policy Recommendations for Obama

Dear President Obama

I humbly submit the following policy recommendations for your approval

• End Race to the Top and No Child Left Behind. Instead return to the Great Society Initiatives of the Johnson Administration. Our present third rate educational system and third world destiny are the products of over 30 years of Reaganomic Orthodoxy. The last time the educational system was admitted to be dysfunctional was under the policy of "Separate but Equal." The Johnson initiatives worked. Invest heavily in public education. To do education on the cheap only invests in the back-door welfare state of the Prison Industrial Complex. Need proof? Four words: Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi.

• Invest in a Domestic Marshall Plan. The success of the original Marshall Plan is the reason that Germany remains the economically strongest nation of the European Union. Massive deficit investment in manufacturing and assembly during World War 2, along with infrastructure and works projects, is what pulled America out of the Great Depression. Not only were we able to afford the Eisenhower-Era Interstate Highway System, it made us economically stronger in the bargain.

•   On the same note, penalize all companies that engage in off shoring of manufacturing and customer service. Employees overseas don't pay American taxes and laborers in the states don't have jobs. Job creators who build and run factories overseas in China, Vietnam, Brazil, India Thailand, Taiwan had better be paying their fair share. To given them tax cuts for simply being wealthy is stupid. If they are employing armies of American tax payers, then maybe they actually deserve a break. But not otherwise. Right now they are being rewarded for stealing from Uncle Sam and destroying the middle class. Rosie the Riveter needs to come back home. For that matter, give job creators here in America a tiny slice of the tax collected from their employees as an incentive...commensurate with the salary and numbers of said employees + plus whatever benefits  the employer offers.This will increase the number of people paying taxes considerably and actually grow the middle class first the first time in over 30 years. And, once again...REAGAN WAS WRONG.

• End the War on Drugs. Reagan's policies of gutting funding for public education, busting unions, and facilitating the exportation of American jobs which shut down factories and left people on public assistance. Reagan eviscerated public assistance as his War on Welfare Queens which he'd been running on ever since his run for the presidency in 1976. By 1985 there were crack cocaine fueled drug wars in the inner cities which spread through-out America. In response Reagan initiated the War on Drugs which instituted a racist police state complete with mandatory minimums, racial profiling, Driving While Black or Brown, Stop and Frisk...all in violation of 4th Amendment Unreasonable Search and Seizure. The neat thing about the War on Drugs (said with a triple helping of sarcasm) is that in addition to  boosting ethnic representation of blacks in prison far beyond their 12 or 13 %  of the American population to over 30% in many prisons - it squelches drug wars while doing absolutely nothing for the underlying causes: a feeble educational system and the disappearance of the jobs which drew blacks to the cities in the first place. If you re-invest in public education and bring manufacturing back to America, not only will you not need to re-up public assistance as much (which you should anyway) but you will be providing alternatives to the economies of last resort. You know...crime. Why is drug use so prevalent the poor? In many cases it is self-medication for people who are without access to physical and mental health care. But as for the rest, people turn to drug dealing because there is ALWAYS a demand for drugs (as anyone who has had dealings with Big Pharma should know) and it doesn't even require a GED. The only qualification you need is a supply and maybe a weapon. Any policy that fails to address these realities is a failure by definition. End the War on Drugs. Marijuana legalization and amnesty would free up millions of dollars and allow for fuller participation of possibly millions of people. Regulate it like alcohol and tax it. The income tax was put in place as a substitute for the tax on alcohol production in the run up to Prohibition. Just saying. Eliminate the disparity in sentencing between crack and powder cocaine. Quit violating the 4th Amendment. That includes Az1070 and its clones.

•  Eliminate all subsidies to energy producers for endeavors not absolutely tied to renewable carbon-free energy production. The way you rolled over for BP over Deepwater Horizon and allowed them to seize control of local and state law enforcement and even the Federal Agencies of OSHA, the EPA, the CDC, and NOAA was disgusting. And they aren't even the biggest player! Any word yet on the rates of birth defects from exposure to oil and Correxit it the Gulf States? Meanwhile BP runs commercials hawking seafood in the Gulf. Disgusting is a very kind word for it. Meanwhile forests are springing up in the Tundra.

• Union membership has collapsed along with the middle class. This very day there is a recall election in Wisconsin over whether or not the union stripping actions of Scott Walker will go unpunished. Also, in the wake of Citizens United, as go unions, so go the only fiscal challenge to the corporate control of our political system. To hearken back to the economic expansion of the America during World War 2 - a big part of that was union membership. Many of the Greatest Generation retired with pensions and were able to provide for their children's education with union benefits. The social safety net was only a second best to benefits provided by unions or employers. A concept verboten since 1980. Please understand this o President: Labor Relations IS Social Justice. The Economy IS our National Security!

• Have a fundamental roll-back of every Clinton policy which deregulated the financial and banking industries. Reinstate Glass/Steagal. The stock market crash of 1987 was called only a "correction" that cost America only hundreds of billions of dollars instead of melting down Wall Street and necessitated Saving and Loan bail-outs due to "junk bonds" because the firewall between banks and speculation contained the damage. Clinton removed the firewalls. Every Republican president after you will continue to pursue the same policies that caused the stock market crash of '87 and the Meltdown of  '08 - progressively worse with each iteration. How many more times can our nation afford to see this movie? In this instance, Bill Clinton was WRONG!

• Do as the Republicans insist on this one issue of the Affordable Care Act...and remove the individual mandate. As a favor to them. This one time. Then replace it with Single Payer and Public Option like you should have done in the first place. You jettisoned those pieces of legislation to gain Republican support. How much love did that actually get you on the Right? As it stands, the individual mandate is only an automatic feeder that benefits private insurance companies far more that it everyone else. So bow to Right-wing pressure and for the sake of fairness to the citizens of our fair nation, and replace it with Single Payer and Public Option. See how quick they spin on their heads and demand the individual mandate BACK! Then you tell them no, you are already doing what they wanted you to do, if they don't like the alternative then they should have thought of that in the first place.

President Obama
There is a great deal you have done for the nation that is a credit to yourself and America. I still can't claim to be happy with you. Your variance from each of the above policies is the reason why. In practice, you have shown yourself to be on the right of Eisenhower. I expect far more from someone painted by his critics as an extreme socialist. You just aren't left wing enough to suit me
I don't doubt your qualifications and I don't doubt that you are better informed and connected that myself.
Really, I'm nobody.
So it really makes me crazy to see the hell our nation is heading toward for reasons that are obvious to me but which nobody else is talking about.
If I may have the audacity to give you advice...
The cardinal sin of the Bush/Cheney Administration was NOT that they were prone to unilateral action (i.e. Unitary Executive theory,) it is that the judgement that used behind their actions was invariably either criminal or imbecilic.
Your insistence on bipartisanship - in any other context - would be admirable. But the only bipartisan compromise Julius Caesar could possibly make with the party of Brutus...well, need I say it?
The political capital you have spent wooing a party that actively wants to destroy you has been an abject waste and has continued to weaken the country.
Precipitous action is no sin, IF YOU ARE RIGHT. Bush and Cheney never were. Judgement is Everything.

Secondly, the policies that Ronald Reagan followed...economically and socially...were all based on the economic theory which created the Boom of the Roaring '20s. Heavy on deregulation and Wall Street speculation. Reaganomics was an experiment in economic and social policy. The experiment was a disaster: multi-trillion dollar deficits, aforementioned drug wars and police state, the de-industrialization of the US, stock market crash, financial institution bailouts, destruction of the middle class, income inequality.
What decade am I talking about?
That's the point. What was a failed experiment has become a traditional orthodoxy and Reagan is considered a prophet.
A false prophet.
Republicans acknowledge no economic or social policy before 1980.
That the policies that Reagan championed produced the Great Depression is not in the lexicon.
That was Before Reagan you see.
 Likewise the things that brought us out of the Depression...public works, the deficit investment in manufacture and infrastructure during the Great Depression, the Labor Movement, the greatest economic expansion ever known during World War 2 (precisely BECAUSE of deficit investment in manufacturing and the demand for war materiel.)
The tax rate of the Eisenhower Administration and the Interstate Highway System.
Much less the Great Society and War on Poverty initiatives of the Johnson Administration.

All before Reagan was elected before 1980, and all NEVER to be spoken of. VERBOTEN

In assenting to the Republican framing of economic and social policy, you are agreeing to this myopic reading of history and truncation of whole worlds of possible solutions.
The education crisis is not insoluble, but you can't do it on the cheap.
There doesn't need to be drug wars and a police state, but that's what you get when public education is lacking and there are no jobs to go to and there's no public safety net.
It's fine to give tax cuts to jobs creators when the jobs they create are here in America.
Otherwise tax cuts to off-shore factory and call center owners are just riping off Peter (the unemployed factory workers here in America) and ripping off Paul (the state and Federal government who doesn't collect taxes from factory and call center workers employed overseas) to pay Judas (the owners of the factories and call centers who get tax cuts just for being wealthy.)
Can you say recipe for growing Federal budget deficit? Sure you can.
Karl Marx could well have said that American products made without American labor is theft. (Maybe its time to revisit the whole Socialism paradigm.)

I see all of this and I'm NOBODY. I'm not even that well educated.

With all due respect Mr. President, why does nobody else?
Unless the veil hiding everything that happened before Reagan is torn, America's destiny as a third world nation (a tiny super powerful and wealthy minority, and grinding poverty for everyone else) is already certain.
Seriously.
How many more stock market clashes and Wall Street Meltdowns can we afford?
It's inevitable. [sigh]

Your humble Servant with love and obedience

Thank you for killing that hideous monster Osama bin Laden
[AND, just because you are way too classy to say it yourself...
IN YOUR FACE GEORGE W. BUSH!!!]

Trust your instincts, a Jedi Knight moves WITH the Force.

Thank You,
Don Quixokie