AlterNet asked dozens of writers, experts and activists on key issues to write about where the country needs to go, and the priorities for Barack Obama’s early days in office. The following is the first in a series of articles AlterNet will be running this week.
Dahlia Lithwick, contributing editor at Newsweek and senior editor at Slate:
Hit “control+ alt + delete” on the Rule of Law. Literally restart the whole system like its 2000 again. That means: Close
A lot of new “law” was invented over the past eight years. But legal?
Not so much.
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Antonia Juhasz, author, The Tyranny of Oil: the World’s Most Powerful Industry — And What We Must Do To Stop It (HarperCollins Publishers, October 7, 2008).
To President Elect Obama:
Be Bold. Take on Big Oil and undo the disastrously failed economic, military, energy, and deregulatory policies of the past. Big Oil has guided public policy down a disastrous road, standing as an obstacle to the fulfillment of critical social movements against war, a failing economy, and global warming. Renounce and undo the use of the
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Dean Baker, Co-Director, Center for Economic and Policy Research
President Obama is coming into office at a time of great risks and enormous opportunity. He can turn the current economic crisis to his advantage by extending national health care insurance as the centerpiece of a major economic stimulus package. Offering generous tax credits to businesses that don’t already insure their workers (along with matching credits to businesses that improve their coverage) will quickly extend coverage to the vast majority of people who are not already covered.
The extension of health care coverage should be accompanied by an opening up of a Medicare-type program to the whole country. This is important both because it will make it very easy for small businesses to simply opt for the Medicare program instead of spending hours comparing the details of various plans and also because a Medicare-type program will provide a mechanism to restrain costs.
President Obama has a huge agenda to fill his terms in office, but if he succeeds in providing universal health coverage, he will have qualitatively changed peoples’ lives in a way that will always be remembered.
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