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I am 60 yrs old now, going on 61 very soon. I happen to be one of those people in the very small minority that thinks the greatest President of my generation was Lydon Johnson. I know, I know, the Vietnam war. Leave out that one very, very huge fuck-up of his, and I still think everything else considered that he was the greatest of my era (1950-present). Ok, now to the subject of my post. The "new" Left we'll call it, seems to be a consolidation of Women groups (abortion, women rights, etc), environmentalist groups, minority groups and to a lesser extent (nowadays at least) labor groups. This is not the old FDR coalition. In addition to the above listed groups we also have the vaunted DLC. I believe what we really need today more than ever is to be truly united. First of all, and I think more & more of us are realizing this, is we have to be more shall I say "aggressive" more in the way the Right has been the last 20 yrs. Most will remember the Left of the 60's & 70's, where they were pretty militant. Today we seem like wimps especially in the great wave of right wing talking points and their control of a majority of media.
Here is my list of the things that I believe will unite us and help consolidate a lot of issues that have somewhat divided us in the last 10 or 20 yrs:
1 Education. First and foremost education I believe is the great equalizer. Completely overhaul our education system along the lines of the general European system. Most importantly, do away with the "local" property tax system and go to a Federally financed & equalized system that will educate our children for kindergarten thru 4 yrs of college or trade school.
2 Federally financed national elections with absolutely no private monies involved. IN ADDITION, local elections will have legal limits also.
3 Completely overhaul the banking/lending systems where you will have SIMPLE, UNDERSTANDABLE, terms on all contracts.
4 Completely overhaul the Tax system federally and also locally. The local real estate tax system is really a fucked up way of doing things.
I know I haven't laid out exactly how to do these things, but we all can argue these issues out. The main thing I'm advocating here is that these are the MINIMUM changes that will allow the poor, and middle classes to survive in this system.
I believe that if we stick to the above changes that these will help to alleviate the divisions we have had on race, abortion, environmental, religious issues. I think that these issues will somewhat dissipate with the installment of these main issues into law. I in no way am saying we should forget about these issues, but I believe if we institute these things it will make it a lot easier for the other things to follow.
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