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ACCORDING TO LIZ - Each of us can choose from a wide range of options on how to welcome in the new year, hopefully on a positive note.
On a personal level, we can make a commitment to reconnect with old friends and to cherish people who are important in our lives, from our families and friends to our librarians and postal carriers.
Phone or e-mail a friend or family member with whom you’ve lost touch just to say “Hi, how are you?”
Help a neighbor.
Speak up against injustice. Even if, or maybe especially if, it doesn’t affect you directly but impacts those with less ability or fewer resources to stand up for themselves.
Smile at random people on the street or in the supermarket.
Revel in the simple power of an unexpected compliment – given or received.
In your work and play environments, think about saying “Yes” when your default response is “Maybe” – and “Maybe” when your default response is “No.”
At the political level, although by their very nature all interactions are political, whether in our communities and cities, or reaching out to our state and federal governments, or worldwide institutions of any ilk, seizing opportunities to oppose the most egregious abuses we face, empowering ourselves as advocates for the best that our governments can provide. Not by propping up the profiteering class, but for we the people.
And look for kernels of good within the news one might ignore because of… just because of.
Under RFK Jr.’s vision for healthcare, cutting corn syrup and fast food from American diets, and pharmaceutical advertising from television.
That the Republican Congress has put Trump on notice that they won’t be blindly rubber-stamping every insanity he chooses to pursue.
In fears for their possible demise, explore the good programs such as Social Security, Medicare, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau do. And find ways to work together to support what works for all of us. And use what doesn’t work anymore as points from which to start negotiating something better.
This kind of nuanced approach would allow the incoming administration to put their imprint on issues problematic to them without throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
But stir up vociferous opposition to proposed cuts to Social Security which could, if directed, finally generate the anger necessary to really double down on that Pentagon pork.
Far from fearing the concept of a Department of Government Efficiency, all Americans should embrace it as a huge godsend to the country, especially if it can be laser-targeted to address what is truly wasteful in the spending of our tax dollars, such as:
- directing the minimal funding required to vastly improve global healthcare to avert pandemics before they begin
- targeting economic inequality, social justice, climate mitigation before they lead to the far greater expense of mass migration and regional conflicts
- putting diplomacy first to ratchet down disputes and avoid unnecessary and counterproductive wars, costly financially and with Americans’ lives and futures
- carving out the legitimate security protection requirements of the country to create the lean, mean – and wise – military machine the country deserves, as well as eighty-sixing all those ineffective and unnecessary weapons systems so beloved of the military industrial complex for decades that have more than doubled Pentagon budgets for decades
- blocking cost overruns, fraud and financial mismanagement at the Department of Defense
- abolishing the graft-riddled outside contractor system, certainly best known in the Pentagon but prevalent throughout all government departments to a greater or lesser extent, where greed guarantees abuse of taxpayer funds
- establishing far more productive fiscal oversight processes and enforcing strong transparency and accountability procedures for every hard and soft taxpayer dollar spent
- mandating open competitive bidding and contracting procedures across the entire government
- halting forever the revolving door mechanisms whereby the elite in industries – banking, agribusiness, armaments and more – rotate into Cabinet and department leadership positions to promulgate whatever is beneficial for their industry and then move back into fiscally remunerative employ while retaining the contacts to leverage that such policies continue at the expense of the taxpayer
- cutting excess bureaucracy by reducing the layers above those who do the actual work while ensuring such cuts don’t make that work more onerous... and without adding even further layers of expensive bureaucracy
- getting the pork out of spending bills, disemboweling the stadiums and roads to nowhere used to buy individual votes, from necessary spending and saving trillions in tax dollars
- instilling effective ethics control over all elected and appointed officials as well as every person employed in the running of the country
American taxpayers want, and deserve, the best return on our investment in the government.
Let’s put politics aside and work together with DOGE to reduce wasteful spending wherever it exists.
Let’s invest our political energy and assets in improving domestic manufacturing, creating good-paying jobs for all, and re-imagining our country in the forefront of a new wave of diplomacy working together with countries around the world to strategically resolve our shared problems.
At home that starts with forever sealing those revolving doors of profit-driven self-interest.
That starts with forcefully exorcizing any financial benefits from the business of war. War must become the solution of last resort.
That starts with requiring Elon Musk, if he is to have any credible role in the country’s leadership, to immediately to divest himself from all fiscal and oversight engagement in his enterprises, and total renunciation of all government largesse that could accrue to his personal advantage.
We must drain the political swamps and return transparency, accountability and, above all, ethics to primary roles in the structures that rule us.
Trumpian demands to cut social services is a direct result of the increasingly onerous interest on the debt generated by his tax cuts for the wealthy. The concept of trickle-down economics has drawn its last breath. All sides need to let go of contentiousness and move on.
Glom onto the biggest-picture concerns of the economy and improving the responsibility of government to act in the interests of the people but thread it through with the rainbow of variety that makes the country American.
Rejecting claims to victimhood, those within and outside the MAGA camp need to shed the hyper-focus on issues of interest to small constituencies and join in becoming the Americans who merit being made great again.
Directing the resentment of the disenfranchised into creating something better out of what already exists, inviting everyone to the party, instead of tearing down what no longer works for some.
Embracing every nuance behind the differences.
Emphasizing commonalities and putting shoulders to the plough of change together instead of inciting divisiveness through finger-pointing.
Love thy neighbor, warts and all, with trust that they, in turn, will love you back.
In memory of Jimmy Carter, who would surely have agreed with most if not all of the foregoing.
(Liz Amsden resides in Vermont and is a regular contributor to CityWatch on issues that she is passionate about. She can be reached at [email protected].)
