Thursday, December 08, 2005

A wishlist for the New Year

From time to time one of the visitors to this site decides to leave a message, or a comment. That interest is much appreciated, and would be even more so if the author did not hide behind the “anonymous” label.
The most recent remarked that posting other people’s editorials hardly qualified as opinion. But the editorials or pieces that I post have been chosen for timeliness and because they express my own opinions better than I could express them myself. After all they are written by professionals of the word, who have access to many more sources than I do. I share them with you because they are good, i.e. well written and to the point, and you might not have had the time to look for them. I would think that judicious selection counts as opinion.
But I take my correspondent’s remark seriously and maybe I should write more; at least so my wife keeps telling me.
Here comes a wish list for the New Year 2006.
I wish for a Democratic Party that clearly and with conviction stands for:
Healthcare for all, defending consumers from big business drug and insurance companies.
Rebuild the wall between religious and civic practices. Both have their place and role but they should not be commingled.
Good jobs at good pay, standing for unions and against job exporters.
Providing good middle class jobs restoring infrastructure, refurbishing parks, developing alternative renewable energy sources as well as energy conservation.
Universal access to good education. The public school system should be more than just a source of worker bees for industry; it is vital to forge a sense of national purpose and community.
Defending democratic practices in the most basic procedures of a working democracy: equal and unrestricted access to the voting booth, assurance of voting integrity, while diminishing the influence of big money on politics by public funding of all campaigns.
Take redistricting out of the hands of politicians.
Is this too much to ask for?


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