Presidential Election 2008 Profile: Bill Richardson

With the choice coming up next year about who is going to be running our country, i think it is our duty as a people to inform ourselves
as much as possible about who is running, and what they stand for. With that being said i think that the two people who are gaining the most
publicity, Obama and Clinton, should not be elected. They are completely side stepping the issue of the failing war on drugs which causes more harm
each year then the war in Iraq. Which brings me to Bill Richardson, while he doesn't have much information on the war on drugs, and not (in my opinion)
quite as good as a candidate as Dennis Kucinich, he did pass a bill for the decriminalization of medical marijuana. This is at least a step forward, so i thought
i would touch on some of his issues.

The war in Iraq is something on every candidate's lips, so i suppose ill start with that. The war in Iraq costs us as Americans around eight billion dollars each month. Richardson has a seven point plan on ending the war and plans to get the troops out of Iraq this year. Bill''s plan is to remove ALL of our troops.He claims that there should be no US forces left in Iraq, because most Iraqis believe that we are there for their oil, and this perception is exploited by Al Qaeda and other insurgents. So by announcing that we intend to remove all troops, we would deprive them of this propaganda tool. He suggests we work with Iraq from home to get them to work between themselves to make advances in their county, because if they don't want to be a better country, why should we force them.

Bill Richardson states that secure health insurance for every American should be our national goal. Now this is my own personal opinion, but i don't understand why more candidates don't suggest ending the war on drugs in order to make a national health care. We spend so much money as a country on this new era of prohibition that its just absurd we haven't ended it in the name of health care earlier. Richardson takes the matter of health care very seriously, and has a very detailed plan on how to make it happen that you can read more on at his website at http://www.richardsonforpresident.com/issues/healthcare

Richardson calls for a fifty percent decrease in oil demand by 2020 by getting a good 100 mile per gallon car on the market and reducing oil imports to around 10%. Hes also has plans to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2050 by creating incentives for the electric and industrial industries to make significant reductions in their carbon emissions. He also suggests we invite the oil companies to become energy companies, being that they make so much money in oil and would dislike the idea of lowing the amount we use.

In closing the environment is another think not enough Americans take seriously, but Richardson calls for a restore of the clean water act, a reviving of clean air air standards and a way to help states enforce them, to expand disclosure of toxic pollution, protect and preserve our national parks and endangered species, and prohibit thinning of national forests in roadless areas. I personally am a huge advocate of using hemp to make a lot of our paper products like we used to, and stop cutting down all of our trees and killing our planet.