I suggest 2 good blog posts(first and second) that tell what the reaction to his speaking out has been. The first one also talks about the smear campaign John McCain endured in the South Carolina primary 8 years ago. Interesting read.

National Security: Get our hands out of everyone else’s business and become self-sufficient and sustainable. That will mean cutting our dependence on oil from the middle east(and elsewhere) and cheap crap from China(and other sweatshop countries). Once we aren’t meddling anymore than 95% of their reason for hating us goes away.

Health: It’s generally talked about as health care, but it’s much larger than that. Our current system is disease care. Fixing our insurance system will not fix our problems. We need to move our food subsidy money out of meat and dairy and into healthier grains and fruits/veggies. We also need to move it to smaller organic farms and away form large factory farms. That will correct this(ht: SVN):

It will also make it so that cheap food is much healthier. If a decent salad was on the dollar menu but an okay burger cost $5(like a decent salad does)… then this country would be a lot healthier. Also we need to be more active. How about moving a large chunk of the automobile subsidies to subsidize bicycles and bike roads and lanes. Make it safe and cheap to get and ride a bike instead of a car. Now we are getting exercise much more regularly.

Once Americans are getting healthier instead of sicker the health insurance and doctors/hospitals issues would start getting better. To make it even better I’d advocate a law that prohibits you from advertising a drug that requires a prescription. The doctor should be telling you if you need to get on a drug, not commercials on tv. Throw in a law setting a max limit on the dollar amount you can sue a doctor/hospital for and we are in very good shape. For the finishing touches I would suggest state-level and state-sponsored cooperative health insurance plans.

Economy: Obviously my above thoughts already greatly change our economy. It will hurt some industries and help others. I’m totally fine with that. There are plenty of industries that we should want to put out of business(predatory lending, things that destroy the environment and promote unhealthy lives, etc, etc). We should also shape policies to favor small business and entrepreneurial ventures instead of large corporations wherever possible. There is much more economic stability in a metro-region if it’s economy is not 95% dependent on a handful of large companies.

There you go… that would be my plan for fixing America. I know that for many people that doesn’t touch on “their issues”. Sorry, but get your own blog and write about them yourself.

Day 2 of the Charrette was also a pretty neat experience. There were 19 tables of people there to work on ideas for the city. After a recap of the night before we dug in and started brainstorming ideas with our group and drawing them on the maps we had. My group was an amazing mix of people. We had a bigtime developer(did The Jefferson, is doing Echo Harbor and lots of other projects), and architect, an urban planner, a historian(or two), a genealogist, a chaplain and myself. Needless to say I was quite a bit out of my league. I was amazed that most of them knew just about every single building in the city and people were pulling out stats on the number of cars per day on certain streets and average speeds. I liked most of their ideas and didn’t have a ton to offer besides them so I did some floating and got some photos and video.

After the design time each group presented their ideas to the whole group. My camera’s memory card filled up without me getting much from the presentations(need to get a real video camera) and I had to leave a little early anyways so I rolled out after a couple of them. Seems like it was a good experience all around. Here is the video I took from day 2:

The city hired Dover, Kohl & Partners to be the consultant for this update of the plan. They were very impressive. Not only are they VT grads(go hokies!), but they seem to know their stuff. They did a nice presentation about new urbanism, focusing on walkable communities, non-car transportation, maximizing the river as public space, mixed use everything and other cool stuff like that. They had a lot to say about the good things in Richmond(James River, Monument Ave, some very good architecture and neighborhoods) and the bad(some “brutal” architecture, one way streets, large paved areas, etc)… they seemed to have gotten a pretty good grasp on the city so far. They have been out on the streets taking pictures and getting a feel for things and dealing with lots of maps.

There was a open mic time at the end where the public was able to voice their concerns and interests about the city. I was impressed with how progressive most of the ideas expressed were. I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s interactive time and getting to work with others to come up with good ideas!

My biggest disappointment tonight was that Church Hill was outside of what was considered “downtown” and isn’t a direct part of the plan. I wish this lovely neighborhood up here could get some attention as a part of this. Seems to me to be more of a part of “downtown” than Manchester is, but whatever.

Here is the video I took and edited quickly of tonight’s meeting:

That was five years ago. And while time heals many wounds I can’t help but feel like little has been accomplished since then. It’s still hugely unpopular to want to talk about non-military ways that we can end this terrorism. I don’t know of anyone advocating that we figure out what perceived wrongs motivate people to attack us and to right those wrongs. We the US have exploited the middle east for oil for years, we did fund wars over there and then completely bail on people once it accomplished enough of what we wanted. I can’t help but feel that us apologizing for our wrongs and making efforts to right them would do a lot to diffuse the situation over there. Because, despite what the media says, the people attacking us are not animals, they are just angry, desperate people who are looking for something worth dying for.

Happy MLK day everyone. I, like lots of people, still had to work even though it is a federal holiday. But I just wanted to write and say that Martin Luther King is one of my heros. I’ll leave the social commentary to Ross who did a very job with it.

I guess this is me coming out of the closet and letting RVA know that I am a northern bred feminist and pacifist. This all seems very strange to me. As for me, I love MLK and will be celebrating his life and his life’s work this weekend.