U2Kitten said:
IF that were going to happen, and IF it worked, it would take years. We need help NOW!
Too little, too late. We've had a Republican majority Congress since 1994, and in those 11 years, we've had Whitewater, Travelgate, "Monicagate," anti-flag burning amendment talk, anti-gay amendment talk, tax cuts, war spending, and emergency feeding tube legislation. What's missing from all that? Actual legislating.
The GOP has thrived on going from one "moral outrage" to the next, and it has worked. In 2000, Bush berated Gore for not doing anything to lower gas prices, and Bush said he'd appeal to Saudi Arabia et al. to produce more. Except, of course, OPEC claims that it is producing at 100% capacity now and cannot produce any more.
Enough is enough. Americans need to wake up out of their 25 year stupor. Major and necessary projects take time and money. The WPA in the 1930s built a lot of infrastructure in its day. The 1950s saw the creation of the massive interstate highway system that we utilize today.
Fuck "tax cuts." For those who haven't been paying attention, federal tax cuts, by design, disproportionately benefit the wealthy, because lower income people already get either everything or mostly everything back. The government won't be writing you a check for money you didn't earn. In the meantime, your taxes *are* going up in the form of state and local taxes, along with fees being raised.
"State and local taxes," however, do not fund national projects. Period. And it may take time and we may suffer through a few years of expensive gas prices. That's the price that *we* pay for *letting* our elected officials get away with doing nothing. It's our fault for electing these morons. It's our fault for not making them accountable. It's our fault for letting them create one "moral outrage" after another, when all it really is is a diversion from actual legislating. We're not electing the fucking Pope to run the U.S. We're electing, essentially, the CEO (President) and the Board of Directors (Congress). And if the CEO and the Board of Directors sleep with hookers, have consentual sex with their aides, or worship Baal, I really don't give a flying fuck, as long as the company (U.S.) is running well.
This CEO (Bush) and his Board of Directors (GOP-led Congress) are a resounding failure. It was time to hold them accountable in 2004, but we let the "moral outrage" win again. In 2006, we cannot have the same mistake.
My priorities are this:
1) Nuclear plants. There's no exception to this. It's the only mass form of electricity generation that doesn't require destroying the environment. Nuclear plant technology has come a long long way from the days of Three Mile Island and Chernobyl to the point that "meltdown" is virtually impossible. Plus, those large cooling towers aren't even necessary anymore. There has also been immense progress in waste disposal, along with promising technology in dramatically hastening the half-lives of nuclear waste, not to mention that technology exists to recycle spent uranium. Europe does this quite often; America does not.
2) Desalination facilities. Our water supply is limited, but 3/4 of the Earth is covered in salt water. This comes in handy for...
3) Hydrogen fuel. And created solely from the desalinated water. Maybe in time, but from any water nonetheless. The nuclear plants built in #1 will produce the energy necessary to create hydrogen fuel. The profit off of the hydrogen fuel sales should help make nuclear plants be profitable.
4) Mandatory hybrid/fuel cell automobiles. We've shown how hybrid technology can work to increase fuel efficiency in existing automobiles, but we shouldn't go about wasting hydrogen fuel. Who knows what the environmental impact will be of blowing all that water vapor in the atmosphere, so efficiency is important even in "zero-emission" vehicles.
5) High-speed national rail. I'm not talking about the embarrassment that is currently Amtrak. Amtrak is slow, because it doesn't actually own any of its own rails; it must rely on freight rails owned by private railroad companies. It is faster to drive than to take Amtrak, unfortunately. What we need to do is build a high-speed national rail system that can go at least 300 mph and connects, at least, to every major city in the U.S. Which leads to...
6) Subway systems. London is a great model for this. An expansive subway network that not only covers downtown, but also nearby suburbs. Some cities may lend themselves to the traditional "underground" method. Others may lend themselves to an above-ground "trolley" system.
All six above then lead to...
7) Tax restructuring. No, not the Bush model, which will accomplish one thing: shifting the burden to the poor. They already get their federal income taxes back, and a 25% sales tax will hurt these people the most, while giving Donald Trump a chance to buy a million ivory back scratchers.
We need, what I'd like to call, a "progressive flat tax." That is, set a percentage and no write offs. Maybe those who make less than $20,000 a year can pay 0%. Those who make more than $200,000 can pay, maybe, 25%. Those who make more than $1,000,000: 35%. I'm just throwing numbers out there. It makes sense that those who make the money should be footing most of the bill.
That, of course, leads to "big business." They make billions and billions of dollars at our expense every year. When some of the largest of the Fortune 500 companies get away with paying no taxes at all, we have a problem.
Overall, we have to do something, and it isn't going to be easy. We can't expect a "quick fix." We can't expect a "cheap fix." Our abysmally low attention span, as a culture, is probably the most to blame; if a project looks like it will take 10 years or more, then we just don't do it at all. Well, cathedrals used to take 300 years to build, and people still built them anyway.
It is time to finally hold our politicians accountable.
Melon