Second Reconstruction

We need to think about the country we want when we regain power. Weaknesses allowed Donald Trump to come to power, and he’s broken many of our institutions. We will have a chance to build better structures. It’s not a matter of rebuilding what we had.

With this post, I’m starting a series working out some of what we will need and some of the directions we can go. There’s a lot. I want to start with what needs to be fixed, without much on how to fix it. We need a list of problems first.

Just listing the problems is a big project. I’m going to exclude some of them from the start.

• Supreme Court. The problems are obvious, and there are a number of possible solutions.
• Congress. I will assume a functional Congress, just as the economists on the desert island assumed a can opener. There’s not much point in having this discussion if we don’t have a functional Congress.
• The prevalence of misogyny, racism, and LGBTQ+ phobia. They permeate all the other problems. They will have to be dealt with from the top down, as Truman did with racism in the military, but, as in that example, many specifics will have to be addressed in a continuing way. They are something to be kept in mind and addressed as we consider the problems and potential solutions.

I also want to start at a fairly high level. It’s important to be specific, but I have to have some way to narrow down the topics. Here’s my first cut at topics. They overlap each other, and some might be combined.

• Immigration. Dealing with the people who are here. Devising timely procedures for people who want to come to the US.
• Taxes.  Eliminate billionaires. Living wages for all.
• Voting Rights. Eliminate the restrictions. Make voting more accessible.
• Policing. Eliminate ICE. Reform Border Patrol. Remove Nazis. Remove war equipment from local police departments.
• Prosecution of criminals. Prosecute all Trump political appointees who carried out illegal orders.
• Housing. Walkable neighborhoods. Megabuilders. Air B&B. Alternative ways for people to fund their future.
• Transportation. Regulations on self-driving vehicles and smaller issues, like headlights. Electrification.
• Energy. Improve the grid. Back to wind and solar.
• Education. No government money to charter schools. Living salaries for teachers. Major reforms to the way higher education is funded.
• Scientific Research. Vannevar Bush’s structure in “Science: The Endless Frontier” gave us the progress of the 1950s through 2024. It needs another look. Peer review and the journal system. National laboratories. Patenting.
• Environment. Many regulations can be brought back as they were. Structures within EPA, for example, will have to be reconstituted and perhaps rethought.
• AI. Shut it down.
• Rural Crisis. Drug addiction. Industrial flight.
• Health System. Medicare for all. Public health and vaccines.
• Foreign policy/ military. Need better balance between the two. Streamline military procurement and remove graft.
• Nuclear Danger. New START. Nuclear modernization.

For this post, let’s just define the areas that need work. No complaints, no saying that something isn’t important, no figuring out how we’re going to get there or saying that we can’t. Just the areas that need work. I’ll collect the comments for a future post.