A wish list for the new Congress | TPMCafe

Link to A wish list for the new Congress | TPMCafe

I would add to the list: a sane mass-transit plan that would work in rural areas as well as helping people obtain affordable housing.

1. Restore habeas corpus, emphatically endorse the Geneva Conventions, ban secret detention and extraordinary rendition, and shut down Guantanamo and all secret torture sites.

2. Launch immediate hearings on every aspect of the Iraq war, and come up with an intelligent withdrawal plan.

3. Repeal tax cuts for the superwealthy, and close loopholes that allow businesses and wealthy individuals to pretend they are based in the Seychelles, et al.

4. Tie regular increases in the minimum wage to Congress’s salary increases.

5. Investigate, expose, and correct the under-funding and under-enforcement of laws in key agencies responsible for Americans’ safety when eating, at work, in the air, when using prescription meds, when banking, and so on.

6. Launch hearings for mandatory national public preschools, beginning at age three, and for intelligent school schedules. Our post-industrial economy is insanely hobbled by the fact that children are still sent home in time to milk the cows—forcing hundreds of thousands of workers to make rickety arrangements for their care.

7. Start hearings on a national energy independence initiative—a Manhattan or Apollo project for our time—that would look into alternative energy sources and into cleaning up our environment.

Of course, far more is needed, but maybe someone else can ask Santa for an end to the deficit, replenishment of the Social Security fund, ratification of the Kyoto Protocol and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (and other international human rights treaties and instruments, like CEDAW), an end to the military’s ban on lesbians and gay men serving openly, the beginning of a national slavery museum, passage of the Nadler/Leahy Uniting American Families Act that would let lesbians and gay men sponsor foreign-born partners for immigration, an end to the global gag rule, mandatory “greening” of all federal buildings, improved policing of executive pay, an overhaul of the current tangle of equal employment opportunity law (both statutory and case law), and other important stocking stuffers.