... an effective public health care system, universal literacy, with liberty and justice for all.

Everything else is bling.

We can still achieve a prosperous society, but it won't be anything like our present stratified consumer society.

The USA is a wealthy nation, but it's never been a prosperous nation.

There are hundreds of excellent movies I haven't yet seen on DVD, and thousands of free or very reasonably priced books on the internet or in used book stores. (In our city the stores that sold new books are gone. The book sections at Target, WalMart, supermarkets, or pharmacy chains are limited.)

When I travel I'll sometimes turn on the hotel television, flip through a few channels, and think "Nope, I don't want this." I go weeks and weeks without seeing a single television commercial.

At best our home internet connection does 320X240 video without pausing so we don't get television that way either. We do receive the major networks over the air. Maybe once or twice a month our kids or guests will watch a sports event, but that's it.

I'd like to see a national high speed internet similar to our public streets and highway system, free for use by anyone. High capacity wireless service would be available wherever there's a public road or trail. All these scummy communication companies would be partly nationalized, and partly transformed into simple vendors, contractors, or content providers. We could take a bite out of our overstuffed defense budget to accomplish it.