Back to saving the country...

Had an important meeting yesterday that took me away from home most of the day…sorry!  Anyway, back to the serious question of what I’d do if someone were nuts enough to put me, kicking and screaming, into the White House.  We’ve listed the following areas:
Terrorism and National Security
b) Iraq/Afghanistan  (doing good and getting out ASAP)
c) The National Debt
d) Health Care
e) Energy Consumption and the environment
f) Civil Rights (addressing the principles in the  Covenant)/Constitutional
rights as well
g) Katrina/preparing for disasters in general  all kinds
h) Education
i) Drug Enforcement/re-think the war on drugs
j) Immigration

And dealt with several of them.  These seem to remain:


d) Health Care
e) Energy Consumption and the environment
f) Civil Rights (addressing the principles in the  Covenant)/Constitutional
rights as well
g) Katrina/preparing for disasters in general  all kinds
h) Education
i) Drug Enforcement/re-think the war on drugs

Let’s try HEALTH CARE.  I lean toward offering all citizens the same health care they’d get in a Federal or state prison.  Since all they have to do to get it is KILL YOUR FAMILY, it would seem to me to be a good idea, even from the most selfish point of view, to provide a safety net.  I imagine a basic health care, with “buy-ins” to allow greater levels of service, and greater flexibility of doctors and clinics.  So poor people would have their minimum, and the working class would have more, and the well-off could do just about whatever they wanted.

But I would want to check with citizens in Canada and other places with socialized medicine, and get a sense of their satisfaction, and the quality of services. 

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THE ENVIRONMENT.  Here, there are scientists I know personally who have done deep research into these areas.  In one case, I happen to KNOW his work was misquoted by a certain famous author who twisted it to fit the “what global warming?” pov.

It seems to me that we have a problem, and that the only people who DON’T think we do are oil companies, their advocates, and a percentage of people on the far right.  Aside from that, a generous portion of citizens and scientists otherwise across the political spectrum are growing more convinced that something very serious is going on, and that human actions can and must affect it.  What should be done? 

Well…all right, here’s the nutty proposal to start the discussion.  Hydrogen.  All other forms of energy can be used to create liquid hydrogen, a clean-burning (if somewhat tricky) fuel.  Let’s have a crash program to create safe, hydrogen-burning vehicles.  Then geothermal, tidal, solar, wind, petro, nuclear, or anything else can be used to dissociate water into liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen to be burned in cars, or electricity to run plants and homes.

Again, this is just to get the conversation going.  I admit to great ignorance…but am convinced that global warming is a genuine, human-influenced trend, based not just on popular advocacy, but on private conversations with honest, ethical, knowledgable scientists.  They might well be wrong, but man, oh man, if they’re right, our grandchildren are in deep, deep trouble if we don’t change our ways.