So after watching the two debates (then rewatching them on the DVR a couple extra times) I’ve come to the conclusion that should all of our collective efforts in 2018, 2019 and 2020 succeed and wrest the Office of President of the Untied United States from the tiny hands of the would-be Emperor King of the Best of Everything; then we’d better to ready with a list for that new Democratic Majority Congress (c’mon, if we manage to pry his ass out of the Oval Office then we’ll have won a majority in the Senate and held the House, you know this), on DAY ONE.
Because by god, there will be no kumbaya moment on that cold Jan 2021 day, that new Majority had better settle down and get to work and pass some goddamned new Law. Toot de suite! So that long enough time will pass for them to go into effect and be proven BENEFICIAL to the people who still vote for those lying, war mongering assholes on the Right — so that they won’t turn around and give the House back to the Republicans in 2022.
So I’ve been working on my List of New Laws we need, pronto. While they hold all 3 Houses (House, Senate, White) and can pass, pass, sign into Law. In no particular order:
✔ Put as many judges as possible on every bench possible. Expand the SCOTUS by 6 seats — and it’s not Court Packing. We’ve had 9 Justices since 1869. The population of the nation in 1869 was 31.4 million. Today, there are 39.7 Million people in CALIFORNIA. We have a nation with 10 times as many people. Shouldn’t the Court be expanded to hear more cases? Our population isn’t just bigger, it’s filled with all sorts of legal problems that just didn’t exist when we first put 9 people in charge of deciding WHAT the Constitution says and what it doesn’t say. We need a bigger court.
✔ Fix the damned immigration system. END the drug war which has been fueling immigration from Mexico and other Latin American nations my entire lifetime (born 1961). Help Latin America deal with the Drug Lords and rogue militia in the region. Give them military hardware and train them to use it (we’ve done that everywhere on Earth except Russia, China and Latin America), so they can win that fight on their own soil. Stop hurting refugees on our doorstop and pretend it’s going to stop immigration, that’s stupid and immoral.
✔ Make cannabis legal nationwide. Tax that and fund healthcare. What two problems together could be such a great answer!
✔ Make it legal to indict a sitting president and we’ll NEVER have another lawless, lying asshole in our White House.
✔ Get the US Military out of the ‘regime change’ business. The Constitution doesn’t say the Congress OR the President has the power to insist on a new leader in a foreign land at the end of US guns. We should require that our Leaders stop doing it. Make it a law. Reserve the use of the LIVES of our brothers and sisters in Uniform for when our nation or our allies ARE ATTACKED. As it should be.
✔ Publicly finance all federal elections. We find money for all kinds of insane projects, they literally lost billions of dollars in cash in Iraq before Bush left Office. Why not spend some on something that could put a halt to the over-sized influence people with wealth have on the laws we all have to live under (including tax law, eh?).
✔ Get at least a $1 Trillion Green CCC program up and running in 3 months. Wonder how to do that? Go read how Roosevelt and his Administration did it in the heat of the Great Depression and put 300K people in jobs in six months, putting 3 million to work over a nine year period. Get us a jump start on actions to combat Climate Change right away. Build solar and wind to replace coal-fired and other dirty energy plants. Make them Public Utilities, owned by the people of the counties they will serve.
✔ Fully fund research into combating Climate Change. Make a new deal with the world’s governments and be more aggressive about goals. Go prepared with a 20 year plan to shift the US from gas-powered to electric vehicle. Replace airplanes with high-speed trains for most mass transportation between cities and states. Find a way to grow vat meat and stop raising herds of animals to slaughter. This and a thousand other ideas. We have to, or we are consigning our posterity to a world and life of savagery and degradation.
What are YOUR ten new Laws/Programs the new Congress should pass asap?