The following are conceptual elements being submitted to the 2008 Democratic Platform through Barack Obama's "Listening to America" web utility, and to the 2008 Republican Platform via the RNC's Online Platform input system. Neither party has a monopoly on new ideas; in fact, recently, at the party level, they both seem almost completely devoid of them. Let us hope that Senators Obama and McCain, as both somewhat 'unconventional' candidates, can change that, in the final analysis.
While it is unlikely for the following to work its way through the various levels of active screening (or lack thereof) in either party to actually reach any of the policy wonks or K-Street hacks who will handcraft the two platforms, the formulation is a useful exercise nontheless.
This is not intended to be a comprehensive prescription to cure the nations ills, merely some supplemental thinking to address some of the most compelling priorities that are recognized across the political spectrum. (more...)
A PLATFORM for "THE NEW REALITY"
We live in complex times. At their roots, few of our problems exist in isolation. Finding true solutions to the problems of the modern age requires that we think holisticly, across disciplines, in an associative and integrative mannner. Crosscuttting approaches often lead to new ways of conceptualizing old problems, with answers arising spontaneously from the chaos.
Below, we present three such interdisciplinary themes, and show the myriad benefits that each may represent.
Build a National Environmental Energy Infrastructure -
America's physical public works infrastructure is not only crumbling, aged, stressed to capacity, and largely obsolete, it also represents a phenomenal opportunity to turn the pollution of our air, water, and soil into clean energy for the future. Each year, the United States produces more than 260 Million tons of Garbage and over 83 Billion tons of Sewage, which our landfills and waterways can no longer accommodate in the age-old manner, which traditionally considers both to be "wastes".
We call for a bold new Community Climate Initiative to bring an end to landfilling and wastewater discharge in the United States, recovering the enormous reserves of clean energy (and precious water) embodied in these Carbon-neutral environmental resources. Across the country, many municipal governments are at or near their statutory limits for bonded indebtedness and can no longer afford to expand - much less improve - their landfills, and water/wastewater treatment facilities. Fortunately, however, more, larger, and newer facilities which utilize the same obsolete 19th Century technologies for waste managment are not the solution demanded by 21st Century realities.
A variety of emerging technologies now present us with the opportunity to recover both clean energy and clean water, while keeping vast amounts of Methane out of our atmosphere, massive quantities of effluent and runoff from our waterways, and toxic leachate containing heavy metals from contaminating our soil. While environmental regulations since the 1960s have made great strides in reigning in the rampant industrial contamination of air, water, and soil that once threatened the public health, the millennia began with municipal solid and liquid wastes as the largest sources of pollution in the United States.
The new generation of Waste-to-Energy technologies are profitable to operate, as they produce electricity, steam, process heat, syncrude, syngas, or liquid fuels which all have a rising value in the contemporary economy. However, their construction and deployment will require a strong financial underwriter and guarantor, able to amalgamate the risks of many such individual projects and blend them in bond portfolios acceptable to the financial community.
Our commitment to the American public is to end municipal pollution in the next decade, and give those clean, green municipalities significant new sources of revenue which can be applied to other services or lower taxes, as local elected officials deem appropriate. These new revenues will be come from both reduced operating expenses in water/wastewater treatment and solid waste disposal, and from municipal participation in the earnings of Public/Private Partnerships formed to own, manage, and operate these new Waste-to-Energy facilities.
To accomplish this, we will establish a National Land Bank for Reconstruction & Development, to administer a Revolving Investment Fund incorporating $500 Billion in disused federal lands. These are real estate assets owned by the federal government which are not National Forests, Parks, or other environmentally endangered lands, but represent a large pool of [currently unproductive] capital which can now be put to beneficial purposes. Most of this land is desert.
The proposed National Land Bank will manage the sale and/or leasing of such lands for Solar/Wind projects and the growth of Energy Crops (including Algae), with the proceeds used to underwrite a new National Environmental Energy Infrastructure. The NEEI will reconstruct the nation's Water, Sewage, and Garbage facilities to maximize the recovery of energy and potable water. Water Recovery & Desalination are necessary parts of a national strategy for dealing with Climate Change, of which drought is the earliest and perhaps most dangerous manifestation.
The effects of this policy go beyond Zero Landfilling of refuse, Zero Discharge of effluent, and Zero Emission of exhausts. Leveraging private capital, with the long term financing provided by the National Land Bank, the Public/Private Partnerships which build and manage thousands of new Waste-to-Energy facilities will employ millions of people to construct and operate the new NEEI technology. Furthermore, these new facilities will be exemplars for the world, leading to immense new export sales of technology, equipment, construction and operations services.
Reform Science & Technology Policy for Modern America -
In an era where Genetics, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, and Nanotechnology pose new challenges of both risk and opportunity, and in which the quest for new environmental energy solutions to combat Global Warming has become the central issue of times, federal Science and Technology policy is still being administered by 20th Century bureaucracies, many dating to World War II or before.
We propose to reorganize the Department of Energy, National Aeronautics & Space Administration, National Oceanographic & Atmospheric Administration, National Institute of Standards & Technology, National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health/Institute Of Medicine, Coast & Geodetic Survey, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Agricultural Research Service, National Academy of Science/National Academy of Engineering and other federal agencies primarily concerned with science and engineering, into a new Department of Applied Research & Technology, or "DART". Billions of dollars in waste, duplication of effort, and overlapping responsibilities can be saved through such a reorganization. The charter of the new integrated cabinet department will expressly refocus the continuing federal investment in research on two specific themes; "Environmental Energy" and "Efficient Medicine". The former is self-explanatory.
'Efficient Medicine' refers to the marshalling of our exploding base of biotechnology and related fields to drastically reduce the costs of health care - and human sufferig - by disease avoidance while improving outcomes. For example, diabetes alone costs an estimated $175 Billion annually in treatment, while costing thousands of lives; yet its cure is nearly at hand.
To facilite a more effective Science & Technology policy, and foster America's global competitiveness, we must educate more scientists and engineers than ever before. We will ensure this by establishing a new system of National Universities, consisting of four Institutes of Technology which will offer comprehensive tuition financing to students, regardless of their family's ability to pay.
These four National Universities will be establshed by repurposing two of NASA's Field Centers and two National Laboratories of the Department of Energy. Previous studies have concluded that NASA and DoE both have extensive redundancies in their field operations, and that the focus and efficiencies of both organizations would benefit from eliminating this duplication, and the operating costs of the excess overhead associated with it.
We propose to establish a $100 Billion National Engineering And Technology ("NEAT") Endowment, funded with disused federal lands, which will invest in a broad diverse technology portfolio and in the student loans originated by each of the National Universities. The Endowment would provide Grants and Scholarships to Science/Engineering students, but would, more importantly, invest directly in ventures to capitalize their Senior Projects, Masters Theses, and PhD Dissertation research.
In order to promote the requisite academic achievement in science and math neceesary to prepare students for the newly expanded opportunties offered by these National Universities, we further propose to repurpose Defense Recruitment funding by way of greatly expanding and improving the highly successful junior Reserve Officers Training Corps (jROTC) program in the nation's High Schools. The program, which teaches discipline, teamwork, survival, and leadership skills has proven a powerful antedote to gangs, drugs, sex, and violence among its students, and merits expansion on those grounds alone.
A larger and more modern jROTC program would also concentrate on introducing students to new technologies which both hold fascination for young people and which are increasingly vital to the performance of Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines, Coast Guardsmen, and the competitive high technology workforce of the 21st Century. The revitalized jROTC program would teach through student involvement and hand-on participation in projects such as FIRST, the national academic robotics competition for high school students.
Defense recruitment dollars can best be spent on inspiring and preparing students for the future, with supplemental Sci-Tech education. This program enables the DoD to bypass federal, state, and county educational bureaucracies, putting dollars directly into high school classrooms, with each of the armed services estabishing new divisions of educational specialists, able to teach without cost to the local school district. The program would provide a reliable path to college funding for all jROTC graduates seeking to pursue careers in Science & Engineering.
Ensure Social Justice & National Economic Security -
The United States currently incarcerates more than 2.3 Million people, having more of its citizens behind bars than any other nation on Earth, including Communist China. The federal government spends over $55 Billion a year to maintain this, with states, counties, and municipalities spending as much again to fund their own prisons, jails, and other correctional facilities. These costs to the taxpayer are only the tip of the iceburg - the real costs to society are unimaginably greater, in lost productivity, ruined lives, devastated families, and effectively orphaned children.
We propose to reduce the U.S. prison population by 1,000,000 victimless inmates; those drug users and sex workers whose only 'victim' is themselves. These are public health issues, not ones that should be dealt with through the criminal justice system. We propose to apply the savings from this reduction of the inmate population to turn each prison into a Vocational-Technical Junior College, designed to bring marketable skills to all of its inmates.
As recent crises in Sudan, Burma, and Zimbabwe - which went unattended by the United States - amply illustrate, there are cases in which a larger reserve of American forces could be constructively employed to save lives in a dangerous world. Therefore, we also propose to build an American Foreign Legion, part Peace Corps and part Special Forces, at an initial strength of 250,000, recruited competitively from the U.S. prison inmate population, with preference for existing military veterans. Trained in both Combat Infantry and Sustainable Development, and furnished with older aircraft, vehicles, and equipment surplus to the active military, the AFL would be deployed to help bring stability, sanitation, and agriculture to the worlds most dangerous and impoverished places. Serving exclusively outside the U.S. on tours of five years duration, with salary accrued back home and paid upon discharge, members would acquire skills and discipline likely to reduce their tendency to reoffend once pardoned at the end of their tours of duty.
Finally, we would mobilize the total [remaining] U.S. inmate population to plant trees on an unprecedented scale, by the thousands per inmate per year, generating substantial Carbon Credits which can be sold to accrue for each inmate a Relocation Grant to be paid to them upon release. In a similar fashion, those under supervision in parole/probation could be organized, trained, and facilitated to support urban farming initiatives, to bring food-productive green roofs to the city, and cultivate unsightly vacant lots with gardens of living nutrition and beauty. Through the development of botanical skills due to be in greater demand in the future, and an intimate association with the tranquility of nature, such programs should further help to reduce the recidivism all to prevalent in today's criminal justice system.
Reductions in the size of the permanent underclass will lift millions of Americans out of poverty, revitalize our cities, and make us safer in the process, while saving tens of billions of dollars in correctional expenses annually. The societal benefits, to children who will then be raised in two parent homes - with the advantage of positive role models, instead of a parent in prison - are incalculable.