We've waited long enough.

The Republicans have finally fallen on their asses. It took 10 years of absolute power corrupting absolutely but finally Delay, Frist, Rove, Libby, Abramoff, Brownie, and a few others are finally caught red handed. The reason they got into power in '94 in the first place was because they had a plan. And all we here now is where is the Democrats plan? Well I'm tired of waiting so I'm just going to say what I want them to say and hopefully someone will listen and get our country back.

Taxes - We got 22 million new jobs and the longest sustained year over year growth our country has every had under a tax system that charged us a lot more. For everyone who can afford it, say $200,000 and over (like Kerry's plan, yes he had a few good ideas), set the taxes back to where they were. And this part I hear said a lot on the campaign trail but it never gets done, close every single freakin loophole there is. Rewrite from scratch if that's what it takes. Apple wrote OSX from scratch and created a much more stable system, it was a tough switch but it was worth it. (Can you tell I'm on a Mac?) There are too many companies unpatriotically not paying their taxes because they have a PO Box in the Caribbean. There are too many rich folks living off dividends that, through these loopholes because of the tax lawyers no one else can afford but them, they pay fewer taxes than the guy I just bought my gum from.

Voting - The Electoral College has outlived it's purpose. We need a direct democracy. I get the point that campaigning won't be necessary in the small, rural areas because they won't be worth as many votes. But I think just the opposite will happen. A Republican's voice doesn't count in NY and CA, but it would when every vote counted. And how about all the Democrats in Oklahoma and Kansas that just don't vote because they know which way their state will go? And it works for the third parties too. I think we'll see a lot more people vote when they realize it's worth something.

Healthcare - Enough with the communistic fears of universal healthcare. Every GM car costs an extra $1500 because of the healthcare the company owes. Imagine a country where every company doesn't have the added cost burden of healthcare. The money can go into higher wages, more R&D, and of course, where it all goes now, to the three guys on the board with $5,000,000,000 bonuses. And with universal healthcare all the costs of the middleman disappear. All the money that the HMOs are making is the money that would be saved on healthcare costs. We have a pass the buck mentality where hospitals charge $6 for two Advil because, "Hey, the patient's not paying for it." Oh yes, we are. And the newest deterrent to healthcare for all is that we'll all use it too much, thereby burdening the system. I get that, but I'd rather have more than less healthcare. The lost productivity hours due to untimely sicknesses, which is in the hundreds of billions of dollars, would more than make up for it.

Iraq - Yes, getting out answers today's problem. But if we all seriously think about it, we know that when the troops go home, the terrorists won't. We are an attraction to terrorists, we are fueling the flames there that lead the jihadists to fight. But there is no stability yet. If you break it you buy it. It's that simple. And we all know we broke it.

Katrina - No more no-bid contracts to the big companies. Find as many local companies as you can. Use conglomerates as a last resort. No-bids in Iraq are bad but really there are only 5 or so companies in the world that can do what Haliburten and Bechtel are doing. Which reminds me, the Army Core of Engineers should stop outsourcing so much stuff and do it themselves like they used to. Hundreds of millions overcharged for gasoline would just not happen if the Army was fueling itself. It's more of a choice in our own back yard. And money for "Jim's Fix It Shop" is guaranteed to stay local instead the 5 cents of every dollar that ends up in Halliburtin's headquarters. And treat these people as refugees, because that's what they are. If we want New Orleans to basically disappear, fine, but if we want it to stay, we need to get all the people back who want to come. That means a lot of New Deal type of spending. Long term infrastructure building. It'll will cost in the beginning but it will pay for itself in the long run. I still don't get how FEMA is getting away with paying double to Royal Caribbean for housing people on their ships. And why are the buying 150,000 trailers that will only be temporarily used when there are millions of hotel rooms that are empty. And that money just goes right back into the economy too. Can anyone say giant RV surplus sale?

Energy - No single alternative energy source will work. We need mandatory solar panels on all available govt buildings. Wind farms and solar panels may not be as cheap now as they will be but a massive govt. buying spree will bring the price down automatically and on top of that, no matter what they cost, they will pay for themselves in time. Imagine free power. FREE! (minus maintenance, I know. And with the prices down after the govt. spending, they will be cheap enough for individual buying. Tax breaks to car companies to make every car made a hybrid to be sold at the same cost as their gas counter parts. There's enough room in America for enough wind farms to give us twice the amount of power this country uses on it's own. And that's not including solar, geothermal, dams, and biofuel. Corn ethanol won't work but sugar will. Sugar can create an ethanol twice as powerful as corn and it's cheaper to make. And all the waste from all the cows we farm can be locally used for energy as well. Ethanol and any biofuel loses a lot of it's productivity when it's shipped cause that takes energy too. But, focusing locally takes a big chunk of the problem away. We have the technology today to trap a lot the carbon dioxide burned from that and from coal and use it to get more oil out of our own ground. With carbon dioxide, we can pump it into the ground and force more oil up, it's a technology already in use today in some areas of Texas. And alternative energy can be the source used to make the hydrogen we'll need for the hydrogen fuel cell cars we'll use in a couple decades. All this will not only make us energy dependent but even an energy exporter. Imagine Saudi Arabia having to kiss up to us when they run out of oil.

Education - Basically just quoting Tom Friedman here: We need our moonshot. I'm a geo-green too. By encouraging education by actually focusing on it like we did when JFK told us we were going to the moon, we can create the next generation of scientists we'll need to compete with China and India and any other post-industrial nation in the future. And I guess I can just go along with no child left behind since it was a left wing idea to begin with anyway, we just need to do what Bush never did with it, fund it. We're a competitive nation, and we do well when we compete. We just haven't seen any one to compete with since '91. But they're out there, and they're winning.


That's not everything but that's enough of a platform for me to start with. Anyone got anything to add?