The Limits of Power

Keep an eye peeled for Andrew J. Bacevich's new book: The Limits of Power, in case you missed Bill Moyers' interview. It ain't a pretty picture, but it is real, all too real. We have some serious fixing to do. This book is a good place to start. Here is my plan:

• Impeach Cheney. Then Bush. Then try Lynn Cheney for crimes against humanity. Bush might just get off on grounds of mental incompetence. But not the Cheneys.
  
• Reinstate the draft. This nation was never intended and surely not suited to have an army of professional mercenaries. And restrict the National Guard to guard the nation. And the Reserves to be there in reserve, not sent over and over again on weird missions into wierd places. If there is any killing to be done, then we should all share that burden. Killing is serious stuff, best handled by well-trained amateurs, not by paid professionals.
• Then beef up those professionals. So they can tell the amateurs how to do it.
  
• Tax the shit out of the tax-dodging, non-working rich.
  
• Eliminate corporate taxes, which are just a way the non-working rich avoid taxes.
• Eliminate corporate rights as citizens and as shields for criminal behavior. So that the justice system can get at the criminals.
• Outlaw lobbying by non-citizens, which would include corporations.
  
• Free all non-dangerous prisoners. It makes no sense for taxpayers to feed and house them. Instead, find useful and legal work for them. Check out the prison systems that are into job training. Some of these people might also make good soldiers. I served with a bunch of guys whose only other option was prison. Most of them turned out ot be reasonably good killers.
• Make some kind of deal with Raul Castro to take back Guantanamo. One that works for us. That thing is just too crazy for words. Maybe for some luxury hotels in Havana. To rehab our wounded. When I was a kid, Atlantic City worked well for that. You need an upbeat place for that sort of work.
  
• Eliminate sales taxes, which are the most aggregious and regressive of all taxes, hitting the working poor harder than anyone else.
  
• Require all ear-marked taxes (e.g., gaming to schools; gas taxes to highways) go where they are intended and no place else.
  
• Tear down all the fences between Mexico and and the U.S. They are both dumb and useless.
  
• Create a decent work permit system for all people wanting to work here, based on whether they are really needed, i.e., not just displacing American workers to profit corporations.
  
• Legalize and regulate recreational drugs. And wean our people off them. As we did with cigarettes. As we led the world in doing. That would kill the Mexican gangs, among others.
  
• Give every illegal who is not a criminal one and only one chance to sign up for citizenship. That would require they pass an English language test, for their own good. Then catch and kill the rest, focusing first on the Canucks and the Irish and the Russians.
  
• Make fluency in one foreign language a requirement for high school graduation, as it was for me.
  
• Make some modicum of knowledge of American history and institutions a requirement for high school graduation, as it was for me. That would include some grasp of why we separated religion and government, as well as the weird way our government is run by our people and why, like no other, it is designed to be inefficient and why we should worry when it ceases to be so.
• Honor the Second Amendment, perhaps the strongest vote of confidence in our people in the whole document.
  
• Make some modicum of knowledge of the world a requirement for high school graduation. And/or one year of service in a foreign country.
  
• Restrict imports not to exceed exports, to each and every nation, like every intelligent nation does.
  
• Balance the budget.
• Open the 1002 and put the Inupiat in charge of industrial regulation within their homelands and waters. Including the OCS.
• Build a gasline from Prudhoe Bay up the Mackenzie to Chicago, the short and only way it can ever be done. Imperial Oil has the plans on file to do that.
  
• Outlaw all advertising that is deceptive or dangerous to the well-being of our citizens. That would include all pharmaceuticals and all professional services and all alcoholic beverages. In short, go back to where we once were.
  
• Beef up the regulatory agencies so they can protect the public, as they once did.
  
• Rebuild and intelligently reconfigure the nation's infrastructure.
• Make education available to everyone who can handle it.
• Forgive and preclude all future educational loans. Replace them with grants coupled with public service.
  
• Make medical care available to all who need it. Follow the Dutch model, where they spend far less than we do and get far greater benefits. E.g. babies are born at home, not in disease-laden hospitals. Pregnancy and birth are not medical conditions but normal human functions for which the female body was cleverly designed. And drugs only where needed, not as prescribed by the drug companies.
  
• Rebuild our military so it can do the job it was designed to do, protect us from foreign aggression. Rip out all the parts that do other stuff. It is still a damned good military, bloodied but good. The best in the world and the best in human history. But it needs help, help from the citizens it serves and relies on.
  
• Starting from scratch, build an American intelligence system that works, so we cease to be blind-sided as we have been since we disbanded the OSS. Why in God's name are we spending money on monstrous agencies that miss such things as the fall of Iran, the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian invasion of Georgia, and the likely results of invading Iraq? Not to mention knowing where Osama bin Laden is and how to kill the bastard. Build it, as Bill Donovan built the OSS, on people from the places we need to understand, blood-thirsty professors and the like with funny accents.
• We can still kick the shit out of Russia, by the way, and we should make that abundantly clear. And that we will damned well do it if they do not get their silly, obsolescent tanks the hell out of Georgia. Then wrap NATO around them and explain to the Gemans and the French that they have a problem only we can fix. Or they can try it on their own. And we just step back and let Putin take them, as he clearly intends to do.
  

There is other stuff to do, of course, but this should keep us busy for awhile. And help us rebuild the economy. It is well past time we got into construction. We used to be pretty good at that.

I trust you noted that this fits no preconceived philosophical model. I would just call it the American Model, or maybe the Guns and Roses Model, or perhaps the Straight Down the Middle Model. You name it. Let's just do it.

-Karl-