Different Slants

Robert M. Katzman’s Amazing Story: www.differentslants.com/?p=355

This is what I’d do, and I’m older than you are, so listen to me:

1…Stop funding expansion of the Interstate Highway System.  Maintain what there is, but no more widening, lengthening or any new entrances and exits.  It just beckons more cars and delays our conversion to sophisticated rail transportation.  Make cars increasingly unnecessary and make the trains run on time, like it matters.  Because it does.

2…Create and fund a National Railway Authority, some kind of public/private organization.  Hire both retired, existing RR workers and also the unemployed to create a national railroad that will rival or exceed Europe’s in efficiency and economy.  Map out and immediately begin building tracks coast to coast and into every little town on the map.  Knit the whole country together.  Make everyday travel by train inexpensive, realistic, convenient and possible by running trains everywhere.  Put a food car back in the system where the food is actually good, reasonably priced and the service is polite.  It’s possible.  Just hire people who like people.

Build them in America.  If we don’t make trains anymore, then hire people from wherever they still do make trains and create (or recreate) a new industry right here.  Shift the national priority from individual car mode to mass, and pleasant, transit.  Stop consuming oil.  Let OPEC dry up and blow away.   Put millions of men and women to work.

3…Create the “ONE HUNDRED MPG”  prize to be given to the person or company that can invent or convert or modify a type of engine that can be mass produced NOW for a basic 5-passenger car to replace what we have now as fast as possible.  The time is right for people to change their minds.  Offer a billion dollars or whatever your administration feels would be a sufficient inducement to bring the inventors out into the sunshine and get them to thinking.  A billion dollars is about a day in the Iraq War, so let no one bitch about the cost.  We can’t afford to wait until existing major American industries deems it the right time to retool.  Their economic priorities are not in the national interest.  The “Of the people, By the people, For the people” concept should rule the day here, in the interest of helping the most people in this country as fast as possible.

Insure honesty and fairness (to the degree such a thing is possible) by having the awards committee composed of engineers, physicists, metallurgists, chemists, materials engineers and transportation experts.  No car industry types should be allowed anywhere near that committee.  There should be no national boundaries to who gets the prize.  Anyone, from anywhere, if they have a brain…then they’re in the game.   Keep the identities of the committee members a secret so they can’t be corrupted.  Pay them enough, legitimately, so they can make decisions that are in the best interests of this country, and not for themselves.

4…Create a new Tribal Council of Indian Affairs run by a committee of twelve qualified and committed individuals from a dozen different tribes representing all parts of the continental USA and Alaska with ten year terms and annually rotating chairmanship so nobody dominates what ought to be a joint effort to improve the lives of America’s neglected and endlessly cheated Indians.  Keep the Anglos away from it.  They’ve done enough as it is, for the past 300 years.

Build full service, efficient but not glamorous federally owned hospitals on every reservation that will accept one.  Staff them with as many Native American personnel as can be found, and then train more of them to fill every job possible, at fair wages for real work.  End unemployment and rampant disease on reservations.  Get TB under control because it is everywhere on reservations and won’t stay there forever.  Get enough counseling and psychiatric professionals to reduce the way too high suicide rate among the dispirited Indian peoples.  Hire Indians to build their own hospitals.  Put them to work.  Pay them.  Give them back their self-esteem.  Teach them construction jobs so they can make a living wherever they go.

Hire doctors from all over the world, not just in America, who must pass not just a medical skills review, but a compassion test as well.  Hire only people who want to sincerely turn things around for this ravaged and defeated population, and pay them fairly.  Have more then one independent body control expenses, drugs access, and quality of care.  Keep all people in charge on their toes and make them accountable for the decisions they make.

Offer newly graduated doctors in all specialties a fair salary and forgive $15,000 a year in tuition debt to their university if they agree to stay at least 6 years.  If they leave early, the debt returns to them in full, like a reccurring virus.  If they stay longer, keep deducting the school debt they owe.  Have a teaching staff in each hospital to train local nurses, radiologists, etc. so the Indians can begin to take better care of themselves and each other, while raising their standard of living at the same time.  Make controlling alcoholism a priority.  It’s destroying countless Indian families.

5…Create a separate Women’s Health Bureau and make it a Cabinet position.  Make curing woman’s diseases a priority, like curing men’s diseases have been for 200 years.  Give WHB money and authority to offer informed and skilled health care anywhere in the nation, regardless of a woman’s ability to pay.  A healthy woman will become more aware of what she is doing that harms both her and her family.  Maybe self-destructive behaviors can be modified through education.  Have thousands of offices spread evenly across America.  Every woman has a right to have access to the best care America can offer.  It’s not a gift or a luxury.  It’s a question of quality of life and treating all women equally.

6…Have the USA’s FDA coordinate with Europe’s equivalent organization so that when Europe approves of a new drug for its 300 million people, the process doesn’t have to start all over in America adding a decade before a new drug is accessible in this country.  The existing policy is insane.  We are not more caring or smarter than the Europeans.  We are dominated by the drug lobbies and AMA in what is in THEIR best interests and not the general populations.

End the selfishness and greed and let the new Transatlantic Medical Alliance be as respected as NATO.   One governing board, all countries represented, all issues decided by vote, all countries are equal.   Include Israel as a European country, which it is.  The medical advances in that country are stunning.  Why deny the world all the brilliance they offer?  Incorporating Israel’s Technion and other major research institutions into this Alliance would be a gift we give to ourselves.

7…Create a new public/private industry that will be solely assigned to mine America’s landfills.  They are more valuable than gold mines.  Over the last 200 years, enormous tracts of land have become vast repositories of cellulose (paper, wood and related), aluminum, plastic, glass, iron, copper and probably some now rare and recoverable kinds metals contained within old computers, cameras, film, cell phones and related new /old technologies.  Safely burn the non-recyclable combustible material to create steam that will turn turbines and create energy.  Why this isn’t being done now astounds me.

Call it the Recycled Landfill Authority. 

Let the net profits of the sold recycled metals, glass, etc.  go toward creating new college scholarships to let as many people attend and improve their lives and the nation’s human assets.   Hire the unemployed for as many unskilled positions as possible to reduce unemployment, pay them fairly and try to retrain them so they receive more than a paycheck.   The RLA will keep people employed for decades and return millions of America’s inaccessible acres to productive, beautiful and safe use.  Redefine what is considered to be “garbage” and permanently change how we dispose of endlessly re-useable materials.  It’s time.

8…Offer Puerto Rico the chance to be a state, or let them take a walk and become an independent nation.

The current situation is crazy. This is the longest “date” in history!  We should get married already or break up and start seeing other countries.

There are now more Puerto Ricans in the continental USA than on the island.  They already speak what most certainly will become our national language (soon).  They have delegates that can vote for a primary candidate but not vote in the general election.  They can join the US Army, and presumably “die for their country” except it ain’t their country.  They’re the island without a country, since 1898!  Stop this!!

After the November election, the United States Congress should have a straight up or down vote for statehood. No more “possession” status.  What is that anyway?  No more “commonwealth” status either.  Another fancy word that means the Puerto Ricans are second-class citizens.  Personally, I want them in the Union.  They’re as good as we are and in fact have been dying for this country for decades now.  Give them a better reason to do that.

Up or down.

In or out.

No more middle ground.

We’d be a stronger country if they were with us.

One hundred and ten years is long enough to make a decision, people.

America, and Puerto Rico: Choose.

9…Urge Congress to immediately pass, hopefully unanimously, the comprehensive and unforgiving  “Consequences of Military Contractors Criminally Cheating the United States Armed Forces Act”.  

Any company found to be knowingly and willfully supplying America or its Allies with substandard quality weaponry, transport vehicles, engines, computer systems, aircraft, Navy-related, ammunition, building supplies or buildings, body armor, food, medicine and medical supplies and any other item considered to be essential to the well-being of a military unit in the field or at home, will have its assets seized and sold either to its competitors, if found acceptable to the Courts, or disposed of in the most expeditious manner.  The resulting revenues would be divided between the oversight division of the Justice Department, the general military budget and to the part of the government that supervises the building of new jails, because we’re gonna need ’em.

The entire executive team of the corporations found to be guilty of the above crimes, which could easily result in the injury or deaths of our own or allied forces, besides the possible loss of the military objective as well and further endangering our military’s future prospects, meaning the CEO,CFO, COO and whatever other initialed people involved, also including any knowing support staff and/or division managers who allowed such malfeasance to happen and chose to do nothing to stop it will be automatically sentenced to 25 years imprisonment with no parole opportunities.  All of them would be then equal in their evil.

Their property and assets would also be seized and disposed of, as described above, making reasonable allowances for innocent spouses and dependent children to be supported by a supervised Dependents Fund.  However, this allowance would be at the Department of the Budget’s assessment of average middle-class lifestyle at the time of the sentencing, and at the discretion of the courts, in the event hidden assets are suspected.  If concealed and subsequently discovered, the remaining parent/financial advisor or collusive party would also become guests of the Justice System.

The point, the only point, is that cheating our armed forces by undermining the quality of what they need in possible life or death situations is equivalent to treason and supporting the opposing forces.  Such people deserve no mercy or assets.  By denying them that which motivated such self-serving and vile choices, an example would be established that would warn others of the consequences of greed and stupidity.

Remove the authority of purchasing for the military from the military to an expert civilian organization to be hired and intensely scrutinized by more than one federal oversight panel, relentlessly.  Remove temptation for military personal in charge of purchasing to overlook all the above crimes to guarantee a future cushy job for themselves in the offending corporation, once they leave the military and “retire.”

Change the stigma and persecution of timid potential “whistle-blowers” who fear the career consequences of revealing irrefutable corporate crimes that endanger our military or allies by making such an act patriotic, celebrated and including an award ceremony.  Like giving the formerly Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz courage, via a medal.  Quell their fears of becoming unhirable and impoverished pariahs to future employers by using some of the seized assets to create a fund that will guarantee them a lifetime stipend and a middle-class existence.

Call it  The American Sentry Fund and make it a great honor to be recognized as such a person.  That will remove all fears from people who know all the corporate secrets and give them the courage to come forward.  But likewise, and in all fairness, persons who are proven to have falsely reported any of the above for reasons of vengeance or character assassination will also be subject to the same sentence as those they sought to tar with lies.  Fair is fair.

Pass the Act, the CMCCC/USAF Act, give it teeth, give no one a pass for any reason, regardless of fame, wealth or other status and watch the roaring Lions of the Military/Industrial Complex come to heel.

10…President Obama should enact The All For One and One For All Act.

If there is another Katrina disaster, or New York blows up or Iowa floods, what is this national indifference? Why are people standing around in the 49 surrounding states, some 300 million people, shaking their heads and saying:

“Too bad.  Poor New Orleans.  What a tough deal.”

That is such a load of crap!!  We are one country.  One legal body.  When one part of us is in trouble, all of us…ALL OF US…are responsible to save as many people as possible and rebuild their town or city.  When?  Immediately, not three years later, or when we finish doing something more important.  When one of my four kids is in trouble, do I say: Well, most of them are ok, so I won’t get too excited.  I know his house blew up, or he’s trapped by an avalanche, or his town is surrounded by a burning forest.  But I’m a thousand miles away.  I’m too busy to get involved.

No more.  Everybody helps.  Everybody sends a person, blankets, food, water, medicine.  Every state takes in refugees.  Every state sends troops or emergency personnel to save that town and those people.

EVERY STATE!!!  It’s not pot luck, people.  We are a single country, and responsible for each other.  A “more stronger union” doesn’t mean if you feel like it.  Each of us should be the hero who saves the day.  Each of us must send something, whatever we can spare to help end the disaster, wherever it occurs. It is not a governmental decision to make.  It is a moral decision that we accept responsibility to take care of each other to the best of our individual or national ability.  Or why be a nation in the first place?  For who?

New Orleans should be the permanent bad example of national indifference, horrible leadership, local incompetence, a classic disorganized relief “effort” and most of us simply not giving a damn about some miserable family too far away from us to bother with.

Unless that miserable family is yours.  Unless your mother is drowning.  Or your children are sleeping on a roof, as the black Gulf water rises.  Unless your family is poor, and black, and powerless, and as far as you can tell, not essential enough for the rest of the country to come to your aid.  What then?

Are you still a “proud American” when you realize how little your family’s lives and welfare matter to all the safe states?  Are you likely to come running to save them, when the day comes that they are burning or trapped or drowning or buried in an earthquake?  Frankly, I don’t see why you would.  It would not surprise me if you, the former victim, chose to let them die, as they seemed willing to allow your family die.

Taking care of each other should not have to be a law, it should be a national ethic.  A moral law.  A reason to call ourselves a nation.  Schools should teach it to all grades, every year, until kids realize we really mean it.  Medical schools should teach it.  Construction companies should teach it.  Police and fire academies should teach it.  Our National Guard should truly be a NATIONAL Guard, and go where the need is greatest, right here, and not overseas.

People, you want a strong America where everyone matters and no one is disposable?  A country where all lives are equal, period?  Then god-damn it, act like it!  Elect people who get this very simple idea:

We are One Country. 

We will take care of All of Us, first. 

We are All responsible for each other.

If we don’t, then God help us, because we don’t deserve compassion from others if we don’t possess it ourselves.

I give this National Manifesto of Priorities to my country…for free.  The ideas are sound.  Time is racing by, President Obama.  Don’t waste a moment of this opportunity to change America for the benefit of everyone, both inside and outside of our borders.  Don’t make decisions based on what will get you re-elected.

Make decisions based on what’s best for this neglected country.  This country, my country, is very smart.  People will know what you’re doing, and you’ll be re-elected anyway.  But……let’s just keep that last part between us.

Feel free to call me if you have any questions.  I will never be too busy to accept your calls.

Good luck, Obama, ’cause you’re gonna need it.

Love,

Bob Katzman

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                                            About the writer and his other life in Skokie, Illinois:

Bob Katzman’s Magazine Museum: 100,000 periodicals back to 1576!
Wall of Rock: 50 years of cool Rock periodicals on display & for sale
4906 Oakton St. (8000 north and 4900 west) Skokie, Ill 60077
(847)677-9444 Mon-Fri: 10 am to 5 pm / Weekends: 10 am to 2 pm

Katzman’s Publishing Company site: www.FightingWordsPubco.com
Katzman’s online non-fiction stories: www.DifferentSlants.com

Poetry? For me, writing poetry is not an option.
It’s a response to emotion. Like cigarette smoke,
it’s fast-flowing, shapeless and with little time to capture it.
Writing poetry is an imperative. I say what I feel compelled to say.

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