New Year's Resolutions for 2006
This year I resolve to:
Bring our troops home from Iraq and let the United Nations do its job there.
Provide health care for all Americans through an efficient single-payer system.
End the economic embargo of Cuba that has brought hardship to the people there for over 40 years.
Abolish the embarrassing Electoral College.
Outlaw paid lobbying.
Impose tight limits on the amount of money that political candidates can spend on campaigns, applicable to money from public, private, and personal funds.
Stop pretending that corporations should enjoy the same rights as individual American citizens.
End capital punishment — for good, this time.
Pledge never again to impose sanctions on a country so severe as to contribute to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children.
Visualize our own children's faces before deciding to drop a bomb or fire a bullet anywhere near a civilian area.
Acknowledge the terrible injustice that has been done and continues to be done to the Palestinian people.
Participate in the International Criminal Court.
Agree to the Kyoto protocols.
Stop whining about taxes.
Get serious about looking for alternative sources of energy.
Find a way to accommodate more political parties than the Blessed Two — Republican and Republican-Light.
Or instead of all that, maybe I'll just resolve to trim a little fat off some social programs.
Happy New Year . . .
Comments
If just one resolution out of the total was carried out, it would be a good thing. I won't hold my breath.
Posted by: Anonymous | January 1, 2006 08:07 AM
C'mon, now. Being President is hard. It's hard. It's hard work, you see. That is to say, it's hard work. By that I mean it's hard.
Posted by: Rex Kramer, Danger Seeker | January 1, 2006 11:34 AM
Hey just read your comments at The Blue Voice and thought I would stop by. I support every resolution you've got, but it's going to take a lot of hard work to get these things accomplished. One thing I would add is that we need to seriously overhaul the entire elections process at all levels to make it more democratic. Abolishing the electoral college would be a good step but it wouldn't end the monopoly of power enjoyed by the DNC and GOP.
Have a happy New Year
dave
Posted by: dave | January 2, 2006 01:13 PM
Dave, you're right — we do need a major overhall of our electoral system, especially ending DNC and GOP dominance.
One change that would help is adopting a system of proportional representation, as other countries have, and as I posted here.
But how do we go about selling this to a nation of Candides who like to believe we already have the best of all possible political systems?
Posted by: abi | January 2, 2006 01:48 PM