What we need to do now

So it’s actually looking like Obama has a chance to win this thing, and oh, what a mess he inherits. I think a few things will have to happen. First, we need a WPA style rebuilding of our infrastructure. The roads, bridges, dams and rails of this country are sub-par, and a big dose of federal funds would be just the ticket. How far do you suppose $700 billion would go to fixing that up? I’ve heard it said that we could build an entire national high-speed rail system for something like $50 billion. How many jobs does that create?

Second, we need a Manhattan Project style attempt to create and deploy alternative energy. We have the minds and the will, let’s just add some cash and do it. I earlier figured it would cost about $5 billion to create a photovoltaic grid big enough to provide electricity for the entire US. How could anyone vote for a $700 billion bailout and NOT vote for a $5 billion stop burning coal and oil in generators plan? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

Third would be to provide 5,000 visas and scholarships for Iranian college students to study in America. At $100,000 a whack for a free ride we’re talking half a billion, which is what, a few days in Iraq? Think about the diplomatic impact of having 5,000 students, which multiplied by extended families makes hundreds of thousands of new advocates for the US of A each year in Iran. That beats the hell out a preemptive nuclear strike.

Fourth, read “Three Cups of Tea” and carry it out on a giant scale. The title of the book refers to a Muslim saying that if we have a cup of tea we are acquaintances, and after the third we are friends. Long story short, an American in Pakistan and Afghanistan is building schools with local labor and donated materials. He has created more goodwill for the US and helped those folks more than Condi Rice and W could imagine.

There’s going to be a tough row to hoe as these things cost money. There’s been a huge disconnect in the American psyche about spending and taxes. The figure cited for the bailout is about $8,000 per American household. Will we pay it in increased taxes? Not yet. We’ll borrow it from the Chinese and Japanese and leave the bill for the kids and grandkids. At what point do we stop using the national credit card and start paying for stuff?

Two Republican truisms have hopefully been shattered by recent events. One, lower taxes DO NOT increase revenues enough to pay for themselves. Two, an unbridled free market IS NOT an ideal thing. Alan Greenspan yesterday “admitted that he was “partially” wrong in his opposition to tighter regulation, and added that he was in a state of “shocked disbelief” that shareholders were not protected.” Well, no shit Sherlock.

This is such a tectonic shifts it leads to a head scratching moment and wondering what the hell the Right is going to grasp to now? I stopped in at Townhall.Org, a real cesspool of a right wing echo chamber and they really don’t have much to say. The usual “John Murtha is a traitor” from people who never served in the military and bitching about the liberal media. Yawn. Can it be that the long national nightmare is over? One can always hope.

I remember a headline from The Onion during the 2000 campaign season, “Bush promises an end to eight years of peace and prosperity”. If only we’d known how true that would be. There’s a really interesting graphic showing how the rest of the world would vote for US President. Quick! Somebody spin this as “Obama is a foreigner!”

Anyway, it’s too bad that it’s taken a collapse like this to knock some sense into the electorate, but we had it coming. And thank God they couldn’t kick the can of the economy down the road like they did with the war in Iraq, making it someone else’s problem. This fetid pile of feces lies in their greedy, grabbing mitts, and there’s nowhere else to fling it.

We may end up with an entire generation that distrusts business and free markets, which would be a shame in some ways, but ooh Lord, didn’t we get too far off in the other direction? The worst part wasn’t the enabling of voracious greed, it was the idea that the poor and downtrodden somehow deserved their fates, as if some billionaire in Greenwich didn’t have a hell of a lot of luck on his side, rather than just hard work, true grit or being a member of the lucky gene club.

Maybe we’ll end up with a social contract concerned with more than keeping taxes low and every man for him or herself. I loved it when Obama said this is what W meant by an ownership society. You’re on your own!