10 New Year's Resolution Suggestions for the Democratic Party

For forty years, the Demorats controlled Congress, driving the United States into the Pax Americana and sustaining regulated capitalism throughout the Cold War. But then, the Republicans stepped up to the plate in the mid-90s. Since taking power, the Republicans have fouled up nearly every task set before them, and have indulged themselves in illegal contracting, favoritism to donors, high crimes and misdemeanors of all kinds, pedophilia, embezzlement, and outright theft. Having gotten their chance and blown it completely, revealing their complete incompetance as a political entity and the massive failures that conservatism and Reagonomics really are, the Republicans were outright slaughtered in the '06 midterms. But now that the power is theirs again, they have to show that they can still legislate, instead of just win elections on an anti-war agenda alone. Here are my 10 suggestions for things they can do to fix the damage that the Republicans have inflicted upon our nation.

10. Repeal or repair the No Child Left Behind Act.
This legislation has set American schools on the straight path to annihilation. Merit pay and sweeping standardization of tests has roundly failed as an effective means of getting results in other nations, but because it sounds like it should work to rich parents who either home school their children or send their children to private schools, it went to legislation. This faulty law has done enormous amounts of damage to inner-city schools and disadvantaged rural Southern public schools and needs to be stopped, in order to begin the long process of healing America's broken public education system.

9. Implement tough lobbyist legislation
Thanks to wealthy corporate elites, tobacoo giants, Big Pharma, arms manufacturers, and Halliburton, corruption is running rampant through the American legislature. Ideally, half of the Republican Party (and a fair number of Democrats) should be in jail over Jack Abramoff. The Democrats need to put the hammer down on back-room dealings that have so horribly mangled our military assets and that have made it easier for tax-dodging Evangelist criminals like Billy and Frank Graham to avoid IRS non-profit regulations. Tighter rules mean a stronger, safer America, so long as those rules demand that we have integrity and honesty in our dealings with lobbyists.

8. Stay tough on North Korea, get tougher on Iran
Iran is an imminent threat to the stability of the Middle East. If there is ever going to be another unified Arab attack on Israel, it will originate in the rallying pan-Arab cries of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. If it takes an oil embargo, then it takes an oil embargo. Placing nuclear arms in the hands of a far-right fascist who openly expresses skepticism about the Holocaust is an invitation to disaster. Their obvious financing of Hamas' war on Israel demands intervention on some level. If we ever see a mushroom cloud over Tel Aviv, London, or New York, we can say with certainty that Iran would be at least partially responsible. The current rhetoric on North Korea must be applied consistently; if our enemies choose to arm themselves with weapons of mass destruction, then they choose to provoke sanctions and international condemnation. We ostensibly made war in Iraq on suspicion of their desire to pursue the idea of nuclear weapons (certainly not for their oil); why hasn't the Bush administration been tougher on a terrorist-funding nation that SAYS they have a nuclear program?

7. Fire most of Bush's non-Cabinet appointees and put competant people back in charge of domestic affairs
First, the President appoints Exxon-Mobile types to be in charge of briefing his office about global warming, of which Exxon-Mobile is an implicit cause. Then he appoints Elaine Chao to be Secretary of Labor, whose chief agenda item was preventing certain white-collar workers from earning overtime pay. Then he appoints Dr. Hager to be in charge of American reproductive health, even though Mr. Hager believes that life begins at conception and that contraception is sinful. Then he starts saying that he's only going to appoint judges who realize that "our rights are derived from God," in blatant violation of the Constitutional ban on religious tests for public office. We need intelligent people in these positions, not special-interest types or idealogues. Would you want an ex-con in charge of prisons? No? Then why would you want an ex-oil exec in Department of Energy?

6. Roundly support the secular agenda
Bill O'Reilly pretty much never shuts his gaping yap-trap about the "secular-progressive agenda." What exactly is on this agenda? Equal abortion rights, which for all the moralizing of the dunce confederacy across the aisle, is simply good economic sense. It sounds cold, but it's true: young people with easy access to abortions won't have to drop out of college, or high school, to raise children, children who (statistically speaking) are more likely to become criminals. Another thing on this agenda: a pro-science public school agenda. How terrible it is, they say, that unsupported non-science fairy taies like Creationism aren't taught alongside Darwinian theory in our schools. Boo hoo. If God cares, he'll come down here and say so. Also, gay marriage rights. Not because gay marriage is popular (it isn't), but because it's the right thing to do, and the 14th Amendment demands it. Additionally, equal treatment of religious institutions under tax laws. That is, the IRS should be prosecuting several prominent Southern Baptists for refusing to publish their salaries, which they are required to do. These churches also should be punished for their political agendas. One church in California nearly loses its tax-exempt status over a non-partisan anti-war message, but what about the thousands of churhces that rail against abortion, gay marriage rights, or even, as in the case of one Midwest church, threatening to excommunicate non-Bush voters?

5. Tough new environmental legislation
As a society of intelligent, educated people with the best scientists on the planet, we are long past the point in our discourse where global warming's existence is debating. YES, global warming is occurring. NO, it is not just a cyclical natural phenomenon. YES, humanity is exagerrating it ten-fold. YES, we can stop it. Nearly 200 other nations have implemented the Kyoto protocol without having their economies mysteriously collapse, as implied would happen by the ex-big petroleum employees who advise the White House on Kyoto and global warming. We need to set an example for China, showing that we, the two biggest polluters on the planet, have other options and can survive with virtually no impact to our respective economies with just some slightly tougher emissions regulation. Which do you think is more expensive: putting a filter screen on a smokestack and replacing it periodically, or taking on 200 million refugees when the rising sea level consumes coastal cities around the world? In parallel, the EPA needs to be restructured, Philip Cooney should be in prison for editing climate change documents to produce results favorable to the Administration's position on global warming, and Stephen L. Johnson needs to be fired from the EPA leadership for doing such a poor job regulating mercury levels that endanger American citizens every day.

4. Making the military more efficient by fierecely auditing Halliburton/Kellog-Brown and Bechtel contracts
As depicted in the on-sight "Iraq for Sale" documentary, one of the main reasons that our military budget for Iraq went through the roof is the unabashed greed of Halliburton and other no-bid corporate contractors working in Iraq. Truck drivers earn six times what soldiers earn. Halliburton charges the army $100 for every load of GI laundry that it washes. This is what happens when you give someone a cost-plus garaunteed profit contract in which they make more money for every (taxpayer) dollar they spend: THEY WILL SPEND MORE. Why so many private jets? The taxpayer is paying for them. Why so many mercenary security gaurds instead of Iraqi soldiers who could be earning some real money and actually helping the Iraqi economy? The taxpayer is paying for them! How come the Iraqi infrastructure is still in such terrible condition despite the billions that have been heaped into it? Because the more money we spend wasting time and starting and stopping pointless projects, the more we make! Money really does grow on trees, and those trees live in Iraq. The military budget could be reduced substantially with NO change in results if only we would incarcerate Dick Cheney and his corporate buddies, and apply the same auditing standards to Halliburton and Bechtel that we should to any other government contractee.

3. Increased government participation in the economy
Oooh, here looms the spectre of communism, say the Reagonomics idiots. First, we need to keep the capital gains tax strong. How many American millionaires and billionaires will have children who will never work a day of their lives because they were fortunate enough to be born into a fiscal dynasty? And HOW is that a good thing? The capital gains tax needs to be kept, have a higher minimum cut off (that is, it should apply to a smaller number of people), and reap a larger percentage of inheritances. Other government participation projects should include massive green energy incentives, continued farm subsidies, and more incentives to provide manufacturing jobs to Americans; companies who make and sell only American should receive some tax incentives in order to keep the blue collar American out of poverty. The Democrats should roll back Bush's college aid plans, which severely cut scholarship money. And where could this money come from? Easy. Capital gains and a streamlined military budget, of course.

2. A minimum wage hike
This no-brainer is so close to #1 that they're practically tied. The minimum wage in this country has been stable for so many years that the average American minimum wage worker is now probably only earning about 70 to 80 cents for every dollar of the minimum wage when it was increased to its current level. Want to reduce poverty? How about give single urban mothers a fighting chance of keeping their children off the streets? The solution is to just pay them more. Even Wal-Mart suppots a minimum wage hike. Come on now people, this should be at the forefront of our domestic policy.

And at number one...
1. Completely rework American foreign policy, starting with a phased withdrawal from Iraq
This is the issue the Democrats won on, and this is the issue that needs to be pushed to the bitter end. The Iraqi leadership admits openly that it has manipulated American public opinion to gaurantee more American money and American troops for its military; its time we forced them to organize and take care of their own problems. If we are prudent in our withdrawal, we can remove troops from those areas that they are least needed, replacing them with Iraqi soldiers and allowing their army to start generating battlefield veterans and experienced officers, and pave the way for the Iraqi military to start fixing itself. Aside from that, we need to immediately dismiss John Bolton and just pretend he never happened, and put someone on the U.N. who will be more likely to draw international support, especially economic support, for Iraq. We need to repeal the Mexico City Policy, which denies foreign aid to any overseas hospital or family planning institution that even mentions the word "abortion" in its informational packets, even if to say that they don't offer abortions. The HIV pandemic owes much its recent explosion to this policy, an explosion that coincidentally saw its greatest growth under Reagan, Bush Sr., and Bush Jr., who allowed the policy, and its slowest growth under Clinton, who suspended it. We need to gather international support for Darfur, and make sure that aid money is spent appropriately, not just wasted on missionary work, as it typically is under the Bush "faith-based" initiative. A stronger, more self-sufficient Iraq, a more international community-friendly foreign policy, and properly regulated foreign aid will naturally draw friendly nations into closer agreement with our tough stance on North Korea, and our hopefully soon-to-be much tougher stance on Iran. Unfortunately, the blind stumbling idiocy of the current administration prevents any such dramatic, effective change, so what can we do? Boot them out in '08, just like we did in '06. As long as we stay on focus, keep our goals in view, and make sure the public knows that the Democrats still have good leadership in them, we can start undoing the disgusting blemish that is the Bush administration, and move on into a stronger, more stable, more economically sound future.