What the Democrats Could Do (If they were anything but self serving con artists)

As a life long democrat who voted for Kerry although I hate everything he is, I thought it was time to say what the Democrats should do instead of just cursing them and vowing never to vote for another one the rest of my life (except for Judy Robson, WI State Senator).

What the Democrats could do now on the federal level if they had vision ,
OR RATHER WHAT I WANT THEM TO DO.

ON THE WAR (for Human Rights)

1. Admit that the war in Iraq was a necessary second step in the liberation of the middle east from tyranny and terrorism. Advise our country that the war needs to be expanded to the Pakistani borders and to Syria and Iran.

2. Confine their criticism of that war to :

a) the waste of money due to previous privatization of support services (they should re-nationalize those services incorporating them into the armed services and providing enlistment opportunities to those too old or unhealthy to fight)

b) exposure of war profiteering by big business, such as Halliburton. Work to recover the money lost through profiteering.

c) demand that the equipment needed by the troops to prevent injury be provided before engagements, giving the unequipped troops the right to refuse assignments.

d) pass legislation prohibiting the use of torture on prisoners of war in interrogation or confinement practices, adding whistle blower rewards to said legislation. Provide some civilian oversight to interrogations by anti-torture organizations.

e) pass legislation defining and funding reconstruction services to be provided to non-combatants who are supportive to US troops. (On their own initiative, our troops are building battered women shelters in Afghanistan along with schools and wells, but unfortunately the shelters are too close to the villages; to really be effective such shelters must be inside the 8 regional woman's centers that are being constructed at this time and they must be secured by a trained women's guard)

ON WORLD POVERTY

1. Insert labor, environmental and animal welfare protection standards into all US trade agreements instead of free trade.

2. Build on the women's and trafficking programs initiated and directed by the Republicans in the Office of Women's Initiatives.

3. Investigate the use/waste of UN money by the UN bureaucrats and their sons. It is no good to have G8 conferences on ending world poverty when the UN is a corrupt cesspool where opportunistic, greedy, men steal the funds that were given to help the poor of the world.

See this:
By Claudia Rosett
National Review Online
July 7, 2005
Web site: http://www.nationalreview.com/rosett/rosett200507070155.asp

Here's the $19.2 billion question: Among the investigators now dredging the
depths of the United Nations Oil-for-Food program in Iraq, is anyone focused on
the biggest riptide of cash that flowed from Saddam Hussein via one of the
U.N.'s most obscure channels?

That would be the $19.2 billion in Iraqi oil money disbursed by the U.N. over
the past 12 years, not in the name of Iraqi relief, but as reparations for
Saddam's 1990-1991 invasion and occupation of Kuwait.

This money was parceled out by a U.N. outfit based in Geneva,Switzerland, the U.N. Compensation Commission (UNCC), which has so far escaped the spotlights that have begun to expose the web of graft, kickbacks, and front companies that infested almost every other aspect of Oil-for-Food.

All told, the U.N.'s Iraq program involved roughly $65 billion in
U.N.-monitored oil sales, of which some $46 billion were designated for relief
and oil equipment, with most of the remainder funneled through the UNCC.

The guest appearance at Wednesday's U.N. press briefing in New York by UNCC
spokesman Joe Sills provides a prime opportunity to revisit some of the
mysteries surrounding the Iraqi money doled out by the UNCC.

One of the simplest questions is whether we will ever see a full accounting
of UNCC administrative costs, which totaled well over $350 million.

Given that the commission fielded a staff of about 200 during its
boom years(1999-2003), with yearly budgets running to
roughly $50 million, and had no business other than assessing and
paying out claims, those administrative costs average out to
about $250,000 per employee.

Even with Swiss overhead, and the support staff needed for the rotating
three-member panels of commissioners who judged the claims, one has to
wonder about the perks.

The UNCC costs were U.N. fees above and beyond the $1.4 billion
in Iraqi money collected by the Secretariat to run Oil-for-Food and the
$500 million collected for weapons inspections (though for four
of the program's almost seven years, there were no weapons inspections).

Spokesman Sills took the podium Wednesday not to invite investigation of
the...more
here

I believe there is another misuse of funds in the program the UN is administering to stop violence against women which I have written about. See Link Oil for Food=.... I wish Claudia Rosett would investigate that but I suppose women's issues are not as important and there is not enough money to interest her.

ON DOMESTIC ISSUES

1. Protect the right of citizens to affordable health care against the pharmaceutical/hospital/insurance industry complex, including reproductive rights health care.

2. Pass legislation giving all citizens the pension, health program and retirement investments enjoyed by Congress.

3. Eliminate drug criminalization laws and the machinery of enforcement here and overseas. Release all who are incarcerated solely for drug offenses. In other words, repeal prohibition and stop ruining lives and making everyone fund the terror.

4.Strengthen the independence of the food and drug oversight agencies from the food and drug industry.

5. Fund the tripling of animal welfare agents; to prevent poaching on federal lands, meat inspectors, ASPCA humane officers in every state and in every slaughterhouse, undercover agents for the illegal animal importation rings, the research labs, etc.

6. Eliminate the tax and resource breaks for factory farms. Subsidize organic farms and alternative energy producers. Bring solar and wind into the federal weatherization programs. Investigate price gouging by the utility companies and reduce the amount they can charge residential users for energy.

7. Raise the minimum wage to ten dollars an hour NOW!

8. Pass legislation to nullify the supreme court's ruling allowing big business to confiscate private property (but only after they confiscate all the farms and property owned by the Supreme Court Justices).

This is just a short list of what the Democrats could do and are not doing. It is why I will not vote for them again in my lifetime. They sold the filibuster and will allow the stacking of the courts with anti-abortion Christan fundamentalist so that this country becomes a theocracy while we fight theocracy abroad. In the state legislatures, democrats, having sold themselves to the teachers unions, are taxing residential (not business) property to the point of having to sell our homes. They use us when they need a vote and work for the business lobby the rest of the time.