Friends, it's a difficult time. We've got two wars going that we can't afford to pay for.
Our economy is on the fritz, to be plain, due to many years of unregulated excess.
What we've got to do, and do urgently, is:
1. JOBS. We're going to stop exporting jobs, stop encouraging and rewarding companies for outsourcing jobs to destroy our good manufacturing jobs here. We're going to go back to the ideas of Tom Jefferson, and levy a protective tariff on manufactured goods that are imported using slave or misery labor.
Our unemployed are only half the problem; without a stepping stone to a future, our people's talents lie fallow, under-utilized and feeling despised and worthless.
We're going to rebuild our manufacturing base in this country, and restore good jobs, jobs with a future, while dismantling destructive enterprises that feed off foreign misery and import that misery to our unemployed and hopelessly under-employed.
2. ENERGY. We'll for the first time in this administration forbid new coal mines, and resume enforcement of the Clean Water Act that outlawed so-called mountaintop removal and stream bed filling with the dirt and toxic waste. The antics of coal companies are leaving a lasting legacy of ugly land and future payments for cleanup that they can't meet.
So far, we've not done a thing for solar power in my Administration; even the solar tax credit came from my predecessor.
The Rooftops of America are already developed; the tragedy is that instead of covering these roofs with solar panels, we covered them with inert rooftops. Our plan now is to have every roof be solar, and build up a great solar industry that will generate such plentiful power that we can stop charging for it, and dismantle our last few nuke power plants.
We'll use the power for plug-in cars. We'll force auto makers to produce and support a great battery industry.
We'll break up Standard Oil all over again; Chevron, Exxon and the three other major oil companies must be broken into hundreds of new firms, and we need an oil extraction tax that dwarfs current taxes. We need to penalize self-destructive things like oil imports and cheap wal-crap.
3. EDUCATION. We're going to require a return to teaching the "3 Rs". Exotic ideas about teaching kids have failed; in truth, kids learn more from the internet, their peers and movies than they do in our obsolete school environment.
We are going to bring a new dignity to non-intellectual labor: kids are going to be able to learn how to do jobs that really count, build things, make things, and use their hands, as a well-paid and highly-regarded alternative to formal college learning.
4. TAXES. No longer can we tolerate the runaway tax cheats, who have bribed their way to tax exemption. No longer can we afford the disparity in income, where the well-to-do can't figure out where to spend their money, and the honest workers can't figure out where their next dime is coming from. We're going to tax so-called "non-national" or "multi-natiional" corporations, excessive bonuses, banks, tax cheats, the very wealthy, and offshore scams...
1
1
1
