ihoby wog

Next year, I want Congress to focus on the following easy to understand, two word issues:

– Green Jobs

– End War

– Health Care

– Net Neutrality

My vision of the future is about a change of national and international priorities from empire, conquest, profit, and control; and into making our cultural goals being sustainability, tolerance, balance, culture, and awareness.

As for actions, they can be prioritized into the following categories:
1. Diverting funding from the absurdly rich to the working class.
2. Turning our foreign actions from aggression to healing.
3. Holding the crimes of the Bush administration to account.
4. Healing our population and planet.
5. Reforming our government to fully represent us.

My expanded action list can be found at ihoby.com/plan but I can also summarize further in future posts.

1. Diverting Funds – Bankers and Billionaire Corporations have been receiving free handouts in the form of subsidies, bailouts, tax breaks funded by the hard work and tax dollars taken from the majority of Americans. This has gone too far for too long. While Americans are increasingly prudent and in need, they are being neglected by the collusion of business and government setting disaster capitalism to run amok. Business is treating government and government is rewarding business.. this exclusive relationship is poison for this nation’s people, land, sea, and air. It’s a poison that has built slow but it’s effects are unmistakable in causing this financial crisis and climate change. Trickle-down economics has been proven time and time again to never work. Trickle-up however, obviously works very well.

The rich have this power because we are allowing them to keep it – either from kindness, obedience, or ignorance. The time has long since past when we need to claim our eminent domain on the hoardings of the rich, to cut off their supply of corporate entitlement programs, corporate welfare, corporate socialism. They have enough money to be just fine while we route our federal spending back into America’s communities:

– bail out the families facing foreclosure, make their mortgages be affordable
– start the Green Economy with jobs building wind and solar generators
– supplement medical costs to make health care affordable
– increase the minimum wage and lower taxes for smaller businesses

All this and more can be funded by cutting off the corporate free lunch and requiring the richest CEOs and bankers to pay their fair share.

2. Foreign Actions – Our wars of aggression into Afghanistan and Iraq (among other places) are clearly both internationally illegal and extremely immoral. They were started out of a series of dysfunctional world views and need to be ended immediately so that pacification, reconciliation, and healing can bring about the changes and improvements that war can never, ever accomplish.

– remove combat from countries we’ve invaded, replace with infrastructure services
– cut aid to countries who are committing atrocities
– halt all contracts to mercenary, service, and construction profiteers
– cut spending on military procurement programs

3. Holding Accountable – Many many people in and well outside of the Bush administration are clearly guilty of some involvement in War Crimes, Treason, Crimes Against Humanity, and other more minor but serious breaches of law and moral turpitude. Since these crimes were not thwarted at the time or dealt with swiftly after through impeachment – they’ll have to be treated to justice slowly and carefully over the next few years. The perpetrators of these modern atrocities have done these deeds in our name, with our flag, and they must not be allowed to continue their evil deeds under new titles.

– set Congress to investigate War Crimes, Invasion Pretext, War Contractors and Mercenaries, Election Crimes, 9/11 “false flag” evidence, Domestic Spying, etc.
– prosecute perpetrators of crimes being investigated in federal and international courts
– draft regulation to help keep these tragic atrocities from happening again

4. Healing – The endeavor of medicine should simply not be run by organizations who’s primary goal is to maximize profit. That is unfortunately what we have and that is why our medical system is failing to meet the needs of Americans. We also have industries trampling across our fragile earth in a reckless surge of exploitation and pollution. Our natural systems, our global ecosystems cannot handle this level of abuse. We must enact ambitious programs to provide free healthcare for all citizens, affordable healthcare for all people, and a livable planet for ourselves and our successors.

– build a free, universal healthcare system
– dismantle the insurance companies and replace them with assistance programs
– ban the building of any new “dig and burn” plants
– build “green” sources of energy
– shut down the existing “dig and burn” plants

5. Progressive Reform – The Bush administration has been the most secretive, corrupt, criminal, deadly, and unrepresentative office ever. They have privatized, militarized, and marginalized more aspects of our country than ever should have been. All of this has to stop, all of it must be reversed. We want a government who is accountable, transparent, just, peaceful, respectful, and receptive.. a government who spends our money wisely and truthfully.

– do all of the previously stated action items
– expand citizen access to continually participate through democracy
– regulate yourselves
– solve problems instead of creating or exacerbating them
– declassify, declassify, declassify

“can someone explain how a ‘war economy exists’? how could the economy revolve around war? that makes no fucking sense?” -some gamer

We in the U.S. already live in a war economy. It’s been called the Military Industrial Complex and it’s been around for a long time. It’s one of the main reasons why we are considered a rich nation, yet we have such a massive percentage of people below the poverty line. Here’s how it works:

During Peacetime
1 Corporate Taxes —fund—> Military & Contractors
2 Lobbyists of Military Contractors –fund—> Politicians
3 Politicians –divert further taxes to—> Contractors
…repeat steps 2 and 3

During War
1 Politicians –declare—> War and “Police Actions”
2 Taxes — heavily fund—> Military, Contractors, Mercenaries
3 Military and Contractors lose equipment and personnel
4 Lobbyists of Military Contractors –fund—> Politicians
5 Politicians –heavily divert taxes to—> Contractors, Mercenaries
…repeat steps 3 through 5

So the flow of money is primarily from the corporate and property taxes of the citizens, through the government, and into the military contractors. The “economy” is considered sustained because all that money starts in a bank and ends up in a bank – at the expense of you, the working Joe. In a war economy, the working public is considered nothing more than a bottomless well of money and soldiers to be used for making war at a high profit.