Affirmative Action
While there is no clearly defined biological basis for racial categories, there is also no question that generally speaking, women and people of color in America have historically been discriminated against in terms of education and employment opportunities. While much progress has been made in recent years, including in the military, there is still a need for affirmative action programs in the U.S. George W. Bush was admitted into Yale University not because of academic excellence, but because his father went to Yale. If those born into wealth can be given such special consideration, those who are born into disadvantaged homes deserve at least as much.
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Campaign Finance Reform
Money clearly corrupts the democratic process. As such, candidates should be required to comply with FEC public finance rules. However, once elected, office holders should not be allowed to accept any contributions or gifts that are worth more than $100 from any person, company or entity for any reason. Such actions would greatly reduce the power of lobbyists to influence decisions made by Members of Congress.
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Corporations
Given the historical record, Harry Braun views corporations as mindless money machines that must be carefully regulated. Corporations have no loyalty to the American people or even their shareholders. They are not human, yet their raw financial power allows them to hire an army of lobbyists who directly influence the legislative process in the U.s. and other countries. The principal beneficiaries of corporate wealth are typically the CEO’s and their management team, who conduct their affairs in secret and effectively determine who should serve on the Board of Directors. In order to accomplish their financial objectives, corporations have not hesitated to make highly toxic substances, including radioactive wastes, some of which will be killing people for millions of generations into the future. If the long-term problems they cause become unmanageable, the corporation simply goes out of existence – but the problems do not go away. It is why private corporations should never be allowed to determine environmental regulations or deal with the production, transport or storage of radioactive wastes.
Federal and state governments allow coal corporations to put tons of mercury into the brains of our children every year. Agribusiness corporations run concentration camps for animals; and health care corporations run concentration camps for seniors -- all because corporate accounts have determined that it is more profitable to operate that way. Given these realities, the Bush administration’s policy of simply “trusting” corporations to do the right thing is a policy of stupidity. No one with such a misinformed understanding of reality should be elected to be President of the United States. The Braun administration will seek to pass strict new oversight laws that will not trust corporations to do the right thing or to act in the public interest. The only thing the Braun administration will trust is that private corporations will act in their own financial interest. One of the most basis aspects of human nature is that where interest lies, honor dies. To assume otherwise is to ignore the lessons of history, and those who do not learn the lessons are forced to repeat them. But in the case of Spaceship Earth, such ignorance will allow the oblivion scenario to eliminate the possibility of a nanotechnology future, which is a lot to lose. It is why the next election is like no other in history.
Given that a large number of multinational corporations are now financially larger than many countries, it is important not to allow their financial power and lobbyists to influence legislation because it fundamentally undermines the democratic process. This is why a Constitutional Amendment is required to ban all corporate and business lobbying and contributions that are provided to elected officials. This Corporate Amendment will also substantially strengthen corporate oversight by federal officials, it make corporate secrecy illegal, and it will strictly prohibit any corporate dominance and/or influence in the print and electronic news media.
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Crime
Since the Braun Administration will decriminalize all drugs, the army of drug control police can be reassigned to fighting real crime, including the corporate criminals who steal the vast majority of the money from the American people. Harry Braun supports the death penalty, provided there is no doubt about the fact that an individual committed first degree murder. If the death penalty is warranted, the method of execution should reflect how the victims were executed. Painless lethal injections should only be used in cases where the victims received similar treatment. An eye for an eye is not so much for revenge, but justice. The most critical aspect of breaking the cycle of street crime and poverty is to provide young people with a high quality education (see Education) and an opportunity to participate in the free enterprise system.
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Defense
As President, Harry Braun will continue to maintain America’s military superiority, but he will stop the production of any new weapons of mass-destruction, and the existing inventory of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons will be destroyed, provided that other countries agree to do likewise. Conventional weapons are far more appropriate to successfully resolve any military conflict, and few Americans are aware of just how formidable America’s conventional military assets are. For example, the U.S. has 10 Supercarrier naval task forces, and the rest of the world has none. The U.S. has more tanks, aircraft, space weapons systems and intelligence gathering services than the rest of the world combined, and the next generation of robotized combat vehicles on the drawing boards are even more formidable. But the war in Vietnam provided an insightful and important lesson about the limits of military power, and that even rice farmers have pride and will fight against impossible odds to defend their countries against foreign invaders. Unfortunately, this lesson was not learned by the Bush administration, and lessons that are not learned must be repeated, in this case in Iraq. It is unfortunate for all of the innocent people killed that Bush was a wealthy party boy in college, and not a student of history.
As President, Harry Braun will issue a new directive to U.S. armed forces that will involve protecting the American people by defending Spaceship Earth’s biological life support systems. Given that over 90 percent of the global ocean ecosystems are already dead, the U.S. Navy and Air Force will be given the responsibility of protecting the remaining 10 percent from the vast fleet of several million unregulated fishing vessels that are hunting the oceans into extinction. Until such time as the Windship and OTEC systems can be deployed on a scale to provide a permanent sanctuary for the fish and other marine organisms, only the U.S. Navy and Air Force have the capability to protect the remaining ocean ecosystems. The Navy is already evaluating OTEC systems as ideal sea-based facilities that could fuel and feed the fleet. The Army and Marines will also have an equally important role to play in defending what remains of America’s old-growth forests and wilderness areas, as well as the borders of the U.S. The Braun administration will also end Bush’s privatization efforts that result in taxpayers paying corporate security policemen $1,200 a day on no-bid, cost-plus contracts.
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Drug Wars
The Braun administration will end the drug war that has put millions of Americans in prison and cost the taxpayers more than $230 billion since 1968. Drug problems are health problems, and they should not become criminal problems. By making drugs illegal, violent crime and gangs are allowed to prosper as they did when alcohol was made illegal, and prison populations dramatically increased. For decades, the U.S. has been financing a fleet of crop dusting aircraft in countries such as Columbia that spray highly-toxic herbicides on vast areas of Columbia’s interior. Within a few days of this chemical onslaught, the forest areas that were sprayed turn black and die. The herbicide poison does not distinguish between food crops or coco plants, thus the entire ecosystem and its human and animal inhabitants are devastated, whether they are guilty or not. Once drugs have become legalized, the prison populations will be substantially reduced, and the billions of dollars that are spent on the drug war can be used for more constructive purposes, including drug treatment programs and research into the molecular mechanisms of addiction.
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Democracy Amendment
How can the Bush Administration establish a democracy in Iraq, if a democracy doesn’t even exist in America? If elected President, Harry Braun will present to the American people a Democracy Amendment to the United States Constitution that will allow the government of the U.S. to change from being a representative republic, whereby only elected representatives have the right to vote on key national legislation, to being a true democracy, whereby each registered voter is empowered to vote for national legislation and any authorizations of war. The concept of a representative government evolved from the fact that in the 1700s, when the U.S. Constitution was drafted, the technology to allow a true democracy to function, such as telephones, television and computers, did not exist. As such, the concept of a representative republic was the only practical method available for making governmental decisions. That was then. This is now.
There is no longer any reason to deprive citizens of the right to vote on the key issues that are all too often negotiated in secret behind closed doors. All too often candidates for office fail to disclose their real priorities until after they are elected, after which they then proceed to vote however they choose, regardless of what the majority of their constituents may think. Such misrepresentation would not be possible in a true democracy. With the passage of the Democracy Amendment, representatives would continue to be elected to the House and Senate, as they are now, but it does mean that their new responsibility will be to inform their constituents, who shall then have the power and responsibility to vote for or against the legislation that is proposed. America has long promoted Democracy abroad. It is now time for Democracy to come to America. In the process, American citizens will become far more interested and informed in the actions of their government because they will know that ultimately, they will be able to participate in the final vote that will determine the outcome of priorities and legislation. American citizens will no longer just be political spectators; they will be decision makers.
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Economy
While all the presidential candidates talk about creating millions of new jobs, they never explain exactly how they are going to accomplish the task. As Harry Braun points out, the economy is profoundly impacted by energy policy because every product produced has an energy cost, and America’s continued addiction to non-renewable fossil and nuclear fuels means it is impossible to know what the cost of doing business will be in the future. However, by shifting to a renewable solar hydrogen economy, it will be possible to know that in the future energy costs will continue to be reduced as more and more engineers optimize the solar hydrogen production systems. In the first four years of the Braun administration, over 10 million high-quality manufacturing and maintenance jobs will be created as wind-powered hydrogen production systems are mass-produced in America’s automotive, aerospace and shipbuilding industries, and all of the existing vehicles (including aircraft) would be modified to use hydrogen fuel. It will also be necessary to develop and install and interstate hydrogen pipeline system as the backbone of America’s new energy system. The $8 trillion dollar capital investment will generate approximately $1 trillion annually and transform the U.S. from being the largest energy importer to a Saudi Arabia-class solar hydrogen energy exporter, with a fuel that is non-toxic, pollution-free and inexhaustible. The trigger mechanism for this “transition of substance” is the passage of Fair Accounting Act legislation that will end subsidies to fossil and nuclear fuels. That will make hydrogen produced from water with wind turbines the least expensive fuel. The oil and coal companies will then rapidly become solar hydrogen companies, providing sustainable prosperity without pollution for America, and the world.
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Education
The elementary through high school educational system in America requires fundamental changes if American students are ever to be competitive with their international counterparts. More than a decade ago, Glenn T. Seaborg, a Nobel Laureate who served as National Chairman for the development of high school chemistry courses and was a member of a special national commission that investigated the state of American education, concluded that if an unfriendly power had attempted to impose upon the U.S. the mediocre educational performance that existed, we might have viewed it as an act of war. Seaborg indicated that the situation is not getting any better because students are not being "turned on" by teachers that are rarely well trained in science and mathematics. When asked, "If it takes inspirational teachers to bring students along, and we are not producing very many, what's the answer?" Seaborg replied, "That's a very difficult problem."
Indeed, the fundamental question is how can one be expected to teach what one does not know? This issue is compounded by the fact that in most universities, the college of education is where the least accomplished students go for easy A’s, and then once they graduate and secure a teaching position, they become virtually impossible to remove because of the tenure system. While the Bush administration advanced a “no child left behind program” based on testing, according to The New York Times (September 6, 2003), the Bush administration has failed to have the program properly financed to accomplish the goals, and its Education Department has neglected the all-important issue of teacher quality by simply allowing individual states to adopt an “honor system.”
Ideally, one’s fundamental technical education of science and math needs to begin early in life when language is first acquired. While there are not many parents or teachers who are qualified to teach chemistry or other technical subjects, especially in the preschool and primary school levels, there are more than a few. As such, the Braun administration will organize an effort to have the most creative teachers help to produce high-quality CD/video productions with state-of-the-art animation, which can then be made available to virtually every student on every major academic area. This would then allow the poorest inner city children – as well as their parents -- to have access to the very best instructors and educational insights. The funding for education in general can be dramatically increased if America is transformed into a Saudi Arabia-class energy exporter of solar hydrogen.
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Employment
Current “free market” practices are responsible for encouraging corporations to outsource jobs to countries that use child and slave labor and environmentally destructive practices that are not tolerated in the U.S. What is required is not free trade, but “fair” trade practices. As such, the Braun administration will amend all of the existing trade agreements to eliminate financial incentives for companies to outsource American jobs overseas. Rather than bringing American wages down to Third World levels, the Braun administration will bring Third World country wages up to American levels, so that prosperity without pollution will be for all people, not just Americans. While every presidential candidate talks about creating jobs, only Harry Braun has a Phoenix Project plan that will supercharge the American economy by creating over 10 million high-quality private sector manufacturing jobs as the U.S. becomes energy independent of all fossil and nuclear fuels and every vehicle is modified to use hydrogen.
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Energy
As Harry Braun continually points out, energy policy directly and profoundly impacts the economy, the environment and U.S. foreign policy, and given the exponential and interrelated nature of the energy and environmental problems, America needs to shift from fossil and nuclear fuels to solar hydrogen systems with wartime speed (i.e., by 2010). This means there is no time for any significant R&D, which means we must focus on technologies that are already well-proved, such as wind-powered hydrogen production systems.
This “transition of substance” can be accomplished in less than 5 years because wind systems are no more difficult to mass-produce than automobiles, and every existing vehicle (including aircraft) can be modified to use hydrogen. The focus needs to be on solar-sourced hydrogen because it is the only fuel that can displace fossil and nuclear fuels worldwide. Hydrogen is much safer than gasoline, it is pollution-free when burned and inexhaustible, provided it is made from water with electricity generated from wind or other solar-sourced renewable energy technologies. Approximately 10 million one-megawatt wind-powered hydrogen production systems will make America 100 percent independent of all fossil and nuclear fuels. Given that wind systems are similar to an automobile from a manufacturing perspective, and given that over 15 million automotive vehicles are manufactured in the U.S. annually, there is no question that all 10 million wind systems could be manufactured and installed by 2010. The hydrogen pipelines can also be engineered to transmit electricity as well as hydrogen, thereby avoiding the need for building a vast new array of unsightly overhead high-voltage transmission lines across America’s majestic vistas.
For the past 50 years, U.S. energy policy has been focused on fossil and nuclear fuels that have horrific environmental costs that are not currently factored into the current accounting systems. Mountain-tops are chopped off every day, which devastates the entire area, in order to get at a relatively small amount of coal, which when burned, puts tons of highly-toxic mercury into the air and water, and our children’s brains. It is why the remaining fish in the sea are no longer fit to eat, and why one child in six is born with brain damage from mercury contamination in the mother’s womb. Free market forces are literally poisoning our own people. Trees only have a value if they are cut down. The fact that trees and forests are like the lungs in the body does not register in the current government accounting systems. It is why the current system is like cancer in the body; first it kills the host organism, but then the cancer cells also die. It is a policy of suicide on a global scale, and it must be changed with wartime speed if human civilization is to survive.
Harry and his staff have made repeated attempts to meet with President Bush and Senator Kerry as well as many other members of Congress over the past several years, without success. Unfortunately, while Kerry claims to be a friend of the environment, his energy policies outlined on his website are essentially the same as the Bush energy policy, which is to support token efforts in renewable energy while increasing America’s addiction to the environmentally destructive oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear energy sources. Neither Kerry or Bush explain that the nuclear wastes are leaking and have been out of control for years, and that every existing nuclear plant is corroding, which means they are like ticking time bombs waiting to go off. Such an accident will make the 9/11 disaster look minor by comparison, because some of the really nasty isotopes, such as Iodine 129, will be lethal for 160 million years, which is why business or politics as usual is no longer acceptable.
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Environment
Contaminating our own environment means contaminating our own people. Americans are now forced to breathe polluted air and drink contaminated water, and eat unhealthy and highly-processed junk foods, and live and work in sick buildings that depress their immune system and spread infectious diseases. Many of the most serious environmental problems, including dealing with radioactive wastes, outdoor air and water pollution, mercury poisoning, global warming and climate change, are occurring because of America’s addiction to fossil (oil, coal, and natural gas) and nuclear fuels. In addition, detailed scientific studies published in Nature (Volume 423, May 15 th, 2003,) document that over 90%of the global ocean ecosystems are already dead. This is the first comprehensive analysis of four continental shelf and nine oceanic systems using all available data from the beginning of exploitations. Ecological communities on the continental shelves and in the open ocean sustain three-quarters of global fishery yields, yet the data clearly show the widespread decline and collapse of major fish stocks across widely varying ecosystems.
While advanced countries use sophisticated ships that use satellites and sonar to track fish, and poor countries use primitive 50-mile long invisible “driftnets” that continue to stripmine the oceans even after they are torn from the fishing boats. If that were not bad enough, large fleets of ocean trawlers are also devastating the remaining critical habitats for the fish and other marine organisms that are on the seabed floor. More than 1,000 top scientists from around the world have called for a moratorium on deep-sea bottom trawling. They are convinced it is destroying cold water corals, which are referred to as the rain forests of the sea, before they can even be studied. This ocean genocide will not be tolerated in the Braun administration.
Equally ominous is the fact that the remaining 10 percent of the fish are so contaminated with mercury from the coal plants that the EPA now warns parents about the risks of eating fish. In addition, the farm raised fish have been shown to contain significantly higher levels of dioxins and other cancer-causing pollutants that do the wild fish that are caught in the oceans. It is critical to understand that the remaining 10 percent of the marine organisms are the genetic seed corn that will be needed to restore the oceans. Only the U.S. Navy and Air Force have the technical assets and capability to stop this mass extinction, and as such, the Braun administration will assign the U.S. Navy and Air Force to protect the remaining ecosystems from the vast fleet of unregulated fishing vessels that are hunting the oceans ecosystems into extinction.
The Braun administration’s Phoenix Project plan to mass-produce and deploy sea-based Windships like the Liberty Ships of World War II will resolve many of the global environmental problems. The Braun administration will also enact strict new environmental regulations that will protect old growth forests and the remaining wilderness areas -- as well as optimize the indoor spaces in what are now “sick” buildings where millions of people spend the vast majority of their lives. Harry Braun will also provide the funding to finish the job of cleaning up the existing toxic waste sites with the best bioremediation and nanotechnology technology that is available, and his administration will support continued research into nanotechnology systems that will greatly improve the capability to find and remove contaminates from the soils and water.
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Ethanol
There are significant problems associated with using agricultural crops for fuel, and the resulting substantial increases in the requirements of water, fertilizers, pesticides, and land. According to Dr. Peter Glaser of Arthur D. Little, the low energy conversion efficiency of photosynthesis (i.e., one percent), means that if corn was converted to ethanol on a scale to displace gasoline and other petroleum-based fuels, twice the total existing land area of the U.S. would be required for the transportation fuel needs alone. No land would be left available for food production. Given that transportation fuels only account for about 1/3 of the total U.S. energy requirements, agricultural-sourced ethanol could only have a marginal impact on oil imports -- much less accomplishing the critical task of making America fundamentally energy independent of oil, coal, natural gas and nuclear energy resources.
Although vehicles that use ethanol-blended gasoline reduce greenhouse gases by about 5 percent, this slight improvement is offset by the fact that ethanol increases the vapor pressure and volatility of gasoline. This results in higher emissions of smog-forming volatile organic compounds and aldehydes, the major constituent of which is formaldehyde. Although even short-term exposure to formaldehyde can be fatal, irritation of the eyes and mucous membranes typically occurs before fatal levels are achieved. Long-term exposure to even low levels of formaldehyde may cause respiratory difficulty and eczema. Formaldehyde is classified as a human carcinogen by OSHA and has been linked to nasal and lung cancer, with possible links to brain cancer and leukemia.
Because ethanol is a toxic and hazardous substance, its use is regulated by OSHA, DOT, NFPA and NIOSH. Ethanol must be handled with extreme caution because it can enter the blood stream from breathing the fumes, or by penetration through the skin or mouth. Exposure can irritate the eyes, nose, mouth, and throat. As such, protective clothing, including gloves and splash-proof chemical goggles and face shields should be worn by anyone coming in contact with ethanol. Moreover, people should not eat, smoke or drink where ethanol is handled, processed, or stored since the chemical can easily be swallowed. Moderate exposure can cause headaches, eye and skin irritation, nausea, and drowsiness. Higher levels of exposure (over 1000 parts per million over an 8-hour period) can cause shortness of breath, genetic mutations, damage to the liver and central nervous system and unconsciousness. Exposure to ethanol levels of over 3300 ppm can result in death. Ethanol is also a hydrocarbon molecule whereby the hydrogen is chemically bonded to carbon, which makes it a significant fire hazard in the event of an accident.
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Fair Accounting Act
Harry Braun’s primary legislative objective is to have the Congress hold the necessary hearings that are needed for the passage of Fair Accounting Act legislation, which is the critical “trigger mechanism” for oil and other energy companies to shift their investments and focus from fossil and nuclear fuels to solar hydrogen production technologies. The Fair Accounting Act legislation would transfer the current $150 billion a year in subsidies to fossil and nuclear fuel systems to renewable hydrogen technologies.
The legislation would also factor in the external costs of fossil fuel and nuclear energy into fuel taxes. These external costs include environmental damage; which include the billions of dollars in related health care costs that result from millions of families living their lives breathing unhealthy air; the storage of radioactive wastes that has been out of control for decades; corrosion to buildings and bridges; and the military costs of protecting the remaining oil reserves in the Middle East. If a “fair” accounting system is used, taxes on a gallon of gasoline would be expected to be increased by approximately $1.00 a gallon, which would then make hydrogen less expensive than gasoline and other hydrocarbon fuels. Moreover, the funds raised by the Fair Accounting Act could then be used to help modify everyone’s existing vehicles to use hydrogen fuel. As the fossil fuels are phased-out, so will the carbon tax imposed by the Fair Accounting Act.
This underscores the fact that tax policy profoundly impacts energy, economic, environmental and foreign policies. Just as Caesar found Rome a city of clay and left it a city of marble, we have found our civilization addicted to an oil economy that is highly polluting and rapidly diminishing, and we have the opportunity to replace it with a hydrogen economy that is inexhaustible and essentially pollution-free. While raising taxes of any type is a difficult challenge, it is worth noting that in countries such as the UK, France, Germany, Sweden and Japan, fuel taxes of over $2.00 per gallon have been in effect for more than two decades. Ultimately, the bottom line is that if gasoline is less expensive at the pump than hydrogen, most consumers will continue to purchase gasoline. Consumers need to understand that they are already paying well over the proposed $1.00 a gallon fair accounting tax in external energy costs. The only difference is that they are not paying the cost at the gas pump -- but rather in their taxes, their health care costs and their day-to-day quality of life.
While the Bush administration is seeking to secure the remaining oil in the Middle East and to find the last of the world’s oil both offshore and in the remaining wilderness areas, none of these efforts will resolve the fact that the U.S only has 3 percent of the remaining global oil reserves. These reserves are being rapidly depleted, but even if they were inexhaustible, their profoundly negative environmental impacts would still dictate the urgent need to undertake a transition of substance to solar hydrogen energy systems. Both Bush and Kerry pay lip service to renewable energy options but they are both committed to having fossil and nuclear fuels provide the vast majority of America’s energy for the foreseeable future. Neither political party is talking about a fundamental shift to solar powered hydrogen production systems, which would then fundamentally resolve many of the world’s most serious energy, economic and environmental problems.
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Foreign Policy
America ’s foreign policy should be based on treating others as we want to be treated. However, since WWII, the U.S. has been supporting a large number of brutal and undemocratic regimes in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Iran, Vietnam, and Iraq -- and millions of innocent people have been killed and injured in the process. In the case of the Iraq war, it was obviously based on false intelligence data, and the net result was that the cradle of civilization was reduced to rubble for oil, and American troops now break into thousands of Iraqi homes in the middle of the night and humiliate the local residents. President Bush has proclaimed that his invasion of Iraq has made America safer, but the brutal attack and occupation has supercharged the recruitment efforts of al Qaeda, and alienated much of the world in the process.
Like the Capitan of the Titanic, Bush is not aware that the biggest threat to the American people is not Iraq or even al Qaeda, but the rape, rob and ruin energy policies of his administration that are poisoning our own people and destroying the biological life-support systems of Spaceship Earth. Because of the “exponential age” in which we live, it is literally a question of whether or not a nanotechnology utopia or an ecological oblivion will evolve in the not too distant future. There are already several billion people on the earth who are already without adequate food and pure water, much less democratic political systems. Because it is 11:59 for Spaceship Earth, we are all like passengers aboard the Titanic, and we only have a limited amount of time to turn the wheel and change course.
At present, most people, and none of the other presidential candidates, are concerned about the crossing of the exponential curves whereby the descending curve of resources intersects the ascending curve of consumption, which is like the passengers on the Titanic not worrying about the iceberg. Harry is convinced that the only way to avoid the exponential iceberg is to change the equation by shifting to pollution-free solar hydrogen energy sources with wartime speed. While Bush and others dismiss the “doomsday scenario, let us assume we are both wrong. If the voters support Harry’s view and he is wrong about the serious nature of the problems, the net result will be a rapid transition to sustainable prosperity without pollution as America leads the world in shifting from fossil and nuclear fuels to a solar hydrogen economy. By contrast, if the voters believe President Bush that there is nothing to worry about and he is wrong, the net result will be unprecedented chaos and suffering as the rapid loss of the earth’s primary food production systems ends human civilization, and its potential for a nanotechnology future.
The reality is that both Democratic and Republican administrations have used falsified documents and intelligence data to initiate the mass-murder of innocent people in foreign countries such as Vietnam and Iraq, or the dozens of other brutal and undemocratic dictators that the U.S. governments have been supporting over the past 6 decades. It was the Kennedy administration that authorized the CIA to finance the bloody coup in Iraq, which killed large numbers of Iraq’s educated professionals in order to put the Baath party into power. Up until Gulf War I, Saddam had been an ally of the U.S. when most of the atrocities occurred under Presidents’ Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan and Bush Senior.
Even in the original Gulf War, Saddam first notified the U.S. Ambassador ( April Gillespie) of the impending invasion, and she gave him the now famous approval by stating that the U.S. would not get involved in such “border disputes.” Harry Braun was opposed to the war at the time not because Iraq had a legitimate border dispute with Kuwait, but because the Emir of Kuwait had deliberately flooded the oil markets in order to discourage the solar hydrogen energy development programs that were underway in the U.S. and Europe, and it worked. Kuwait had one objective, which was to keep America addicted to Middle East oil. But Bush Senior had no strategic plan to make the U.S. energy independent of oil, and he apparently felt it necessary to reinstate the despotic and undemocratic Emir of Kuwait and his 80 wives in order to keep Saddam from getting control of even more oil. In any case, it was the Bush administration who betrayed Saddam, and while numerous comments have been made about the fact that Saddam had attempted to kill Bush senior, that was only after Bush senior attempted to kill Saddam and his family in the initial hours of the first Gulf War.
The Bush administration dismisses the notion that oil was as a factor in the war, but it was the oil installations that were the initial targets of our military invasion. And while the oil ministry building in Baghdad was protected by U.S. troops, the museums and libraries in the cradle of civilization were allowed to be sacked and looted. Harry Braun does not trust the propaganda put out by the Bush administration, and Vice President Cheney in particular, who according to a CBS News 60 Minutes broadcast, structured DOD’s privatization program so that his former company would make billions on a war with Iraq with no-bid, cost-plus contracts.
It is tragic that President Bush has been such a secretive and Orwellian misleader. He used falsified intelligence data to justify the invasion of Iraq; his “Clear Sky Policy” increases toxic emissions for millions of Americans; he wants EPA to reclassify highly-toxic mercury emissions from coal plants as “non-hazardous,” and his “Healthy Forests” initiative allows commercial loggers to destroy the remaining old growth forests rather than removing the underbrush that causes the wildfires. It took a federal judge to stop Bush from reclassifying nuclear waste as “incidental,” which would have allowed his administration to simply walk away from the most lethal nuclear waste sites that will be spreading their poison like red die in a glass of water for hundreds of millions of years.
If Harry Braun had been President, instead of making more radioactive wastes and invading Iraq he would have used America’s treasury and talent to make America energy independent of all oil, coal and nuclear power by 2010, by organizing American industry to mass-produce wind-powered hydrogen production systems. The difference is presidential priorities. Harry would never have allowed the CIA to finance and direct the mass-murder of innocent Iraqis in order to put the Baath Party into power in the 1960s, any more that he would now be financing the Saddam-like drug warlords in Afghanistan. However, that does not mean that he would make matters worse by killing and injuring thousands of additional innocent Iraqi people in order to remove Saddam from office. Saddam was getting old and he was spending most of his time writing plays, not building weapons of mass destruction. As the world now knows, the U.N. sanctioned weapons inspection program was working, and had Bush simply agreed to meet with Saddam, the war and all the death and destruction it caused would never have never been necessary in the first place.
It is especially ironic that Saddam was the only Arab leader who defeated the mullahs in order to create a secular state in Iraq, where women were treated as equals in society. This is why he was not an allay -- but the moral enemy of Osama bin Laden and the other religious fundamentalists. Now that Saddam is gone, all indications are that the mullahs are taking over. While Harry would certainly agree that Saddam probably killed a large number of people, that does not justify President Bush’s decision to kill and injure thousands of additional innocent Americans and Iraqis, and to reduce the cradle of civilization to rubble in order to remove him from power. Bush clearly used falsified data as a justification to stop the U.N. inspectors from completing their job. He stated that Saddam had a large arsenal of WMD and if we didn’t act, there would be mushroom clouds in America. As the whole world now knows, there were no WMDs in Iraq, but instead of admitting the mistake, Bush now attempts to justify the mass-murder and chaos the war brought as a good thing anyway because Saddam was a bad person.
From Harry’s perspective, the people in Haiti and dozens of other countries in the world are in far worse shape than the Iraqis were under Saddam, even during the dire period of the international sanctions. If helping desperate people is President Bush’s mission, why is he not calling for the invasion of Haiti, Somalia or many of the other countries in Africa? Why not invade North Korea, which we know has WMD and the intercontinental ballistic missiles to deliver the warheads to American targets? The answer is simple enough for a child to understand. None of these other countries have vast oil reserves.
Harry does suspect that the former CIA analyst was correct when he stated in a CNN interview that it was not Saddam but the Iranians who used the chemical weapons on the Kurds, who were likely collateral casualties of the Iran/Iraq war that was in progress. This situation is similar to when the U.S. fire-bombed and destroyed the city of Dresden in World War II, an ancient art city in Germany that had no military value, just so Truman could intimidate the Russian army that was camped on the outskirts of the city. Or how about dropping the nuclear weapons on two Japanese cites at a time when the Japanese government had all but surrendered, which explains why Generals’ McArthur, Eisenhower and Le May (who led the air attack against Japan) were all opposed to using the atomic bomb on innocent civilians. Truman did it anyway, and most Americans think Harry Truman was a great President, not a mass-murderer of innocent people. This double standard is one of the primary reasons why so many people in the world are now “anti-American.”
Unfortunately, there are many bad leaders in the world, many of whom we support in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt and Pakistan. North Korea also has a “bad” leader, (who President Bush referred to as a “pigmy” who he “loathed”) and we know that he has real WMD, including the intercontinental ballistic missiles to deliver them to American targets. And, like President Bush, he has threatened to use such weapons. But America has not invaded North Korea, presumably because North Korea has no oil. To dismiss securing Iraq’s vast oil reserves worth several trillion dollars as the real motive for the war denies the most basic characteristic of human nature. Few Americans would approve of the no-bid contracts that allow taxpayers to pay corporate privatized police $1,200 a day, in contrast to Iraqi police that make $30 a day, or military MP’s that make about $50 a day. And when these companies are caught over-billing the government by millions of dollars, they are simply asked to return the money. What a deal for corporations that foster slave labor by outsource jobs overseas and moving their operations abroad so they don’t even have pay their fair share of taxes.
When President Bush and others say the people in Iraq are better off, Bush only secretly went to a U.S. military base in the middle of the night at the Baghdad airport for a few hours. If Bush really believed his rhetoric, he would have marched through Baghdad in the sun in a victory parade so that he could have greeted the cheering crowds as the liberator. While Harry has not been in Baghdad, he does watch CNN and read The New York Times, which has daily accounts of the horror that continues to go on for many Iraqis. One recent front-page story (The New York Times, Feb. 14, 2004), “Chaos and War leave Iraq’s Hospitals in Ruins,” describes how gallons of raw sewage wash across the floors of the major hospital in Baghdad, and about how the drinking water is contaminated, and 80% of the patients leave with infections they did not have when they arrived. According to Iraq’s U.S. appointed Ministry of Health, “It’s definitely worse now than before the war.” Other accounts document the fact the women are now physically terrified to leave their homes, large numbers of professional people are being assassinated daily. Now that the religious fanatics have already filled the power vacuum, they are in the process of returning Iraqi women to the Third Century. The Bush administration is doing to Iraq what the Sharon administration has done to Palestine, where most of the children now live in sewage and despicable conditions, and many have severe brain damage due to malnutrition. This is not liberation, but genocide.
One would anticipate that none of the tens of thousands of people in Iraq who lost their lives, limbs and property as a result of the U.S. invasion believe they better off. Indeed, the U.S. not only used cluster bombs, but uranium-tipped munitions that will be causing genetic defects in Iraqi children for generations. Harry is frankly appalled that President Bush or other American citizen’s play God with other people’s lives and property. Harry has no doubt that if a foreign army invaded our country, and broke into our family’s homes at 3:00 in the morning and dragged our terrified and humiliated family members out into the yard and held them at gunpoint while their house was ransacked and ruined, he and most other Americans would never accept such treatment. They would get their guns and homemade bombs they would be attacking the invaders military convoys at every opportunity -- just like Iraqis do ours.
Given the scale and scope of this dishonesty and chaos, the U.S. should work with the UN to return Iraq and its oil resources to the Iraqi people, pay reparations, and bring our troops home, in spite of the fact that the net effect will be to replace Saddam with a religious theocracy run by the Mullahs. In the case of Afghanistan, it is well to remember that the Russians also won every battle in Afghanistan, but they lost the war. President Bush has elected to team up with and finance the brutal Saddam-type warlords in Afghanistan that run the heroin production labs, but such actions will not bring stability to Afghanistan. While it is easy for the U.S. to use advanced weapons to win military battles with the primitive armed forces in Afghanistan or Iraq, trying to provide order and social and economic stability in these countries over the long-term is another matter. As has often been said, those who do not learn from history are forced to repeat it.
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Government Regulations
An unregulated free market is like cancer in the body: it first kills the host organism, which then means the cancer cells also die. Unregulated free markets will rip the tops off of mountains for a temporary supply of coal; they will cut down the last of the Redwood trees and hunt down the last elephant and the last fish in the sea. As such, a policy of simply “trusting” that corporations will do the right thing is a policy of stupidity that denies history and human nature. Government regulators are needed to act as the referees and enforce the rules in the game of free enterprise. Companies that use Enron-type accounting systems that steal from the taxpayers and shareholders, or have to rape rob and ruin the natural environment in order to make a profit should not be tolerated.
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Guns
Harry Braun will support the existing gun legislation and not further restrict gun ownership for private law-abiding citizens. He will, however, oppose providing legal immunity to gun dealers and he will propose strict regulations on the types of lethal ammunition that is made available to the general public. Cop-killer and armor-piercing bullets should be illegal without a special permit, and more non-lethal ammunition options should be developed and made available to gun owners.
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Healthcare
The Braun administration will eliminate the need for health insurance by providing universal health care for all Americans. This new American Health Care System will be operated on a non-profit basis, in contrast to the current system that is structured around the financial interest of drug and insurance companies and physicians and dentists who “operate” on a commission basis. This is why half of all surgical procedures are unnecessary and the majority of health care costs are expended on terminally ill patients in the last few months of their lives. While those who commit first-degree murder are allowed to have pain-free lethal injections, millions of elderly Americans are forced to live out their final years by suffering in high-cost concentration camp-type nursing homes. Those who have spent any time in such facilities cringe at the thought that someday they will end up there. As President, Harry Braun will introduce legislation that will empower American citizens to determine how they want to deal with their death. If they choose to end their suffering with a lethal injection, the federal government should respect and abide by their last request.
The Braun administration will focus on preventative medicine by providing Americans with pure air and water, encouraging them to exercise and eat nutritious food. The Braun administration will put an end to the corporate concentration camps for animals, who pumped full of hormones and drugs and are forced to live out their lives in caged pens, and place a health tax on junk food to discourage its use. The emphasis will be on optimizing the quality of nutrients, not shelf-life. Harry Braun will also incorporate photobiology data into OSHA regulations, which will make “sick buildings” healthy for millions of Americans by the use of lamps that simulate the natural outdoor sunlight in hospitals, schools, and other buildings. Harry Braun will also make Americans aware that we are on the threshold of an era of molecular medicine that will soon make a biological transition to renewable resources inevitable. This “designer gene” era of molecular biology and nanotechnology will clearly be the most significant development in human history, resulting in a new species, Homo Immortalis.
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Immigration
Harry Braun believes America must gain control of its borders if illegal immigration is ever to be brought under control. The Braun administration will explore the redeployment of Army and Marine units along America’s borders to help ensure the integrity of the borders. The larger issue, however, involves the economics of why illegal immigration is occurring in the first place. Specifically, the Braun administration will ensure that the U.S. trade agreements with foreign countries will require comparable wages, working conditions and environmental regulations, so that foreign workers will not need to come to the U.S. in order to have a decent lifestyle for them and their families. Rather than reducing the American standard of living, Harry Braun will focus on raising the standard of living for America’s trading partners.
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International Aid
Rather than just providing food aid, which often undercuts the ability of foreign farmers to survive, it is more important to provide assistance that allows others to establish stable state agricultural, environmental and economic systems. Existing subsidies to corporate farms not only add to the federal deficits, but they allow food to be exported and sold in countries like Mexico for less cost that the same crops that are grown by a poor Mexican farmer.
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International Policy
The intense level of anti-Americanism around the world stems from the fact that U.S. foreign policy talks about supporting democracy abroad, but in fact has been supporting brutal and undemocratic regimes all over the world because they support the interests of multinational corporations. Many Muslim intellectuals believe that American prosperity has been based on supporting oppressive regimes in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Egypt, Iran, Vietnam, Chile, Indonesia, the Congo, the Philippines, Pakistan, and Iraq – to name a few. In the case of Iraq, it was the Kennedy administration that had the CIA sponsor a bloody coup that put Saddam’s Baath Party into power, and continued to provide military assistance for decades, even when senior American officials in the Reagan administration knew that Saddam Hussein was planning to use chemical weapons on his Iranian enemies. While the Bush Administration likes to portray the “terrorists” as those who hate “freedom,” such simplistic slogans ignore the real reasons why millions of people have developed an intense hatred not so much for America and its social and religious freedoms, but for its foreign policies that result in unnecessary atrocities.
U.S. dependence on Middle East oil has been driving U.S. foreign policy in the region since World War II. While shifting from oil to solar hydrogen would eliminate this dependence and the billions of dollars that now flow each week into the Middle East countries, such a transition would not address the more fundamental problems of a U.S. foreign policy that says one thing and does another.
Nowhere is this policy more obvious than in the Middle East, where the U.S. was instrumental in helping to establish the modern State of Israel in 1948. While both the Israelis and the Arabs have legitimate historical claims to the land in the area, the Israelis treat the Arabs in a similar way that our forefathers treated the native American Indians -- which is to say brutally. The result has been murder and chaos ever since. Indeed, the U.S. is the only country in the world that supports Israel’s policy of taking the lives, homes and property of the Palestinian Arabs without compensation. Large numbers of Palestinian children are now literally starving to death as a direct result of the illegal Israeli occupation, and while most Americans are unconcerned, the Al Jazerra Arab Television Network broadcasts these inhumane events daily to millions of Muslims, which only intensifies their hatred towards the U.S. and Israel. It is why Osama bin Laden is a superstar hero for millions of young people who are now growing up in the Muslim world.
If such oppression were imposed on Americans, they would also fight to the death to oppose such tyranny. While most Americans deplore the actions of the Palestinian suicide bombers, they forget that large numbers of U.S. solders, sailors and airmen proudly gave their lives in what they knew were suicide missions because they believed the sacrifice was necessary for the defense of our country. Where is the difference? It is important to realize that the history if the Middle East may have been very different if Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin had not been assassinated by a right-wing Israeli fundamentalist who wanted to scuttle the land for peace process. Unfortunately, Ariel Sharon’s brutal treatment of the Arabs is as despicable as America’s treatment of the Indians, the Vietnamese, and now the Iraqis. Just as most of the anti-Americanism in the world is focused on the policies of the Bush administration, what is perceived as anti-Israeli attitudes are in fact mostly focused on the policies of the Sharon administration. While Sharon would not allow the press to observe the recent military assaults into Palestine, according to a CBS News 60 Minutes broadcast, hundreds of Israeli solders who did serve in the territories were so appalled at what they witnessed that that they have refused to participate any longer in what they characterized as a brutal and unjustified military operation.
While much was made of Iraq’s violation of UN sanctions, the government of Israel has violated roughly three times as many U.N. resolutions as Iraq over the past 20 years. Moreover, even though the U.S. is the only country that provides significant financial and military support to Israel, the Sharon administration disobeyed a direct order from President Bush to stop its military incursions into the Palestinian territories. The Sharon administration has not only leveled homes and neighborhoods, but has literally destroyed the plumbing and electrical services in the Palestinian territories. Now a large population of Palestinian children are brain-damaged because they are chronically malnourished, and they are living in sewage and squalor. Ironically, the sewage wastes are now contaminating the critical underground aquifers that supply water to both Palestinians and Israelis. Yet the government of Israel is not even threatened with economic pressure from the U.S. -- much less U.S. military action.
Such glaring inconsistencies in U.S. foreign policy may be dismissed by most Americans, but it seems obvious to Harry Braun, who is neither a Christian, Muslim or Jew, that these policies are the primary reason why hundreds of millions of people in the world are now growing up with an intense hatred for America and Israel. Harry believes that the answer is not the wall that is an obvious admission of defeat, but Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin’s vision of exchanging land for peace, and having Israel return to its internationally approved borders. Rabin’s vision for peace must not be abandoned because he was assassinated.
It is ironic that Israel is such a small country in such a large sea of Arab countries. But because of the long and close ties with Israel, the Braun administration would propose that an American Israeli territory be established in a mutually agreed to area within the U.S., which could then begin to take the pressure off the growing Arab and Israeli populations in the Middle East. The key question for the American people, however, is why our government, which is constitutionally forbidden from favoring one religion over another in domestic issues, is doing exactly that with respect to supporting Israel with billions of dollars in annual payments, and the most advanced weapons in the world. It’s not as though Israel has some significant natural resource that the U.S. needs, such as oil or water. It doesn’t. As such, it is clear that the unilateral U.S. support of Israel and its occupation of the Arab territories is based on the fundamentalist Jewish religious belief that God gave the land in Israel to the Jews, and not the Arabs -- a view that is obviously not shared by the Muslims who have lived there for centuries.
America has clearly taken sides in this religious war, and by announcing his Administration was launching a new “Crusade,” against the terrorist Muslims, President Bush further radicalized millions of the world’s nearly two billion Muslims who know all too well about the atrocities that were committed during the last Crusades. These Muslims are quick to remind us that the Founding Fathers of the U.S. were also referred to as terrorists by the superpower of the day, and that it was Patrick Henry who said in defiance “give me liberty or give me death.” Until these obvious injustices of U.S. foreign policy have been resolved, the war against terror can never be won, and innocent people on both sides of the conflict will continue to be slaughtered.
Instead of being guided by a philosophy of “he who has the gold makes the rules,” the guiding principle of the Braun administration’s foreign policy will be to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” That is why the Braun administration will stop the production of any new weapons of mass-destruction (WMD) in the U.S., and the existing inventory of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons will be destroyed (see Defense). The Braun administration will work with both the Israelis and the Arabs to finally bring peace to the Middle East, and the Braun administration will work with the UN to protect the remaining biological life-support systems of Spaceship Earth. The Braun administration will have the U.S. Navy and Air Force work with other countries in the U.N. to protect the ocean ecosystems while the global human community undertakes a “transition of substance” by shifting from fossil and nuclear energy resources to solar hydrogen technologies with wartime speed (i.e., by 2010).
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International Trade
The objective should not be “free” trade agreements that encourage child and slave labor conditions abroad, but “fair” trade agreements that protect worker rights and the environment in both countries as a prerequisite. Spaceship Earth is a closed system, and air and water pollution does not stop at national borders. As such, it is in everyone’s interest to have trade agreements that acknowledge this basic reality.
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National Security
Harry Braun believes that the best way to fight terrorism is to stop using military force to impose our will and culture on others. If the logic of using pre-emptive military strikes against other countries that could be a threat to America was used against the Soviet Union, an unnecessary catastrophic thermonuclear war could have been the outcome. Many Americans urged such pre-emptive actions during the Cuban missile crisis, but fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, and in time, the Soviet Union collapsed under the weight of its own corruption. Under the Braun administration, the religious “Crusades” against Muslim countries will be stopped, and waging a preemptive war against a nation that does not attack us first would be unthinkable.
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Nuclear Power
As President, Harry Braun would decommission all of the nuclear facilities in the U.S. by 2010. The sense of urgency is because while the national news media has been consumed with Iraq, the Bush administration has quietly re-licensed and increased the power levels of aging nuclear plants in the U.S. that would have otherwise been decommissioned. There are important reasons to decommission nuclear plants as soon as possible because the longer a nuclear plant operates the more radioactive and accident-prone it becomes. The problem is then profoundly compounded by the fact that the internal components of nuclear reactors are subject to inevitable cracks and leaks that are caused by rust and corrosion. This is a predictable event that is caused by metals being exposed to high temperatures, pressures and corrosive agents, such as water or boric acid, that can result in the worse-case accident in a nuclear power plant: a core meltdown.
According to a confidential report that was leaked to The New York Times ( November 20, 2002), the highly secretive nuclear industry’s internal oversight group has warned utilities that a focus on production over safety has endangered a number of nuclear installations, including the Davis-Besse nuclear plant near Toledo, Ohio. A series of additional articles by Matthew Wald that were published in The New York Times (Jan. 4, 2003, May 1, 2003 and June 6, 2003), further detailed that the corrosion at the Ohio reactor was only discovered after investigators from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) ordered the plant closed for inspection. In spite of the objections of the plant owners (First Energy Nuclear Operating Company), who argued the inspection was unnecessary.
As it turned out, if the plant owners had not been forced to have the inspection, Toledo and the surrounding communities may have become a permanent radioactive deathcamp. The NRC inspectors found the plant was indeed a ticking time bomb because rust and corrosion had eaten away 70 pounds of steel that was more than six inches thick in the reactor cover. Only a quarter of an inch of steel was left to keep the reactor vessel from failing, thereby causing a meltdown that would be an unprecedented multi-trillion dollar catastrophe for the U.S. If a nuclear reactor fails, radioactive isotopes would be distributed up to 10,000 meters over the continental U.S., and they would contaminate virtually all of the freshwater sources. Similar corrosion problems have also caused a reactor 90 miles southwest of Houston, Texas, to be shut down. In the case of the Texas reactor, which is only 15 years old, the leaks are at the bottom of the rector vessel, which makes them much more difficult – if not impossible – to repair because of the significant radiation hazards. The leaks were found in two of the 58 nozzles that are on the underside of the reactor, but the problem is that the nozzles cannot be replaced because they are welded from inside the reactor vessel. Such corrosion problems are a predictable event, and when an accident occurs, it will make 9/11 look mild by comparison.
The stopgap plan is to cut and replace the parts of the tubes that extend from the outside of the reactor, but that will leave a critical gap between the old and new tubes, which will allow the highly corrosive boron cooling water to get access to areas that could result in a failure of the cooling system. This could potentially make Houston a permanent radioactive wasteland.
It is clear that this fundamental corrosion problem is occurring in all of the reactors that are now operating, making all of them ticking time bombs. Even the Chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has raised the issue that deregulation has effectively allowed owners of nuclear power plants to keep reactors operating when they should have been shut down for maintenance and inspections. Given this trend, it is only a question of time before a catastrophe occurs.
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Nuclear Waste
Although hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ dollars have been spent during the past 50 years to develop and promote nuclear energy systems, rather than solving the diminishing fossil fuel problem, nuclear technology has instead created a vastly more profound problem of its own -- radioactive waste. The radioactive waste problem is especially insidious because it is virtually impossible to contain, and it is invisible to the human senses until disease or death occurs. Radioactive isotopes spread in an ecosystem like red dye spreads in a glass of water, and some isotopes, such as Neptunium-237, Cesium-135 and Iodine-129, have half-lives of over a million years. In the case of Iodine-129, its half-life of 16 million years means it must be sequestered from the natural environment for more than 160 million years. Assuming a single maintenance technician paid $50,000 a year, the cost over time would be $8 trillion -- the vast majority of which will be paid for by billions of taxpayers in the future for over a million centuries.
Iodine-129 is a particularly toxic isotope to humans and other mammals because iodine is an essential nutritional element. As such, the microbes in the body selectively extract iodine from food, water and the air. Once acquired, the iodine is then stored in the thyroid gland. The problem is that radioactive and non-radioactive iodine are identical from a chemical viewpoint, thus the body’s microorganisms do not distinguish between the two elements, storing either in the thyroid. If the iodine is radioactive, it will result in fatal thyroid cancer.
Because Idoine-129 is highly toxic for such a long period of time, and because it is highly mobile through both engineered and natural-sediment systems, it is one of the key radionuclides that the Department of Energy (DOE) seeks to control. The high mobility problem is due to Iodine-129’s anionic nature that causes it to be repulsed from negatively-charged surfaces, which dominate essentially all materials. In spite of the fact that billions of dollars have been expended during the past 50 years to try and contain such isotopes, according to investigators at DOE’s Savannah River site, there has still been little actual testing of proposed containment systems.
In the July 4, 2003 issues of The New York Times, reporter Matthew Wald documented how it took a federal judge to stop the Bush administration’s attempt to have the Department of Energy change the definition of millions of gallons of highly toxic radioactive wastes that have been leaking from rusted containers near Hanford, Washington. The original plan was to clean out the tanks and then solidify the liquid wastes into glass logs, which would then be shipped to some deep geologic repository, presumably Yucca Mountain. However, “major technical problems and cost overruns” in the billions of dollars caused the Bush administration to simply redefine the waste and simply “cover up” the problem. By changing the definition of the waste to “incidental,” DOE officials argued that the leaking containers could then simply be covered up with dirt and concrete, which means the wastes, such as Iodine 129 will be spreading into the environment for the next 160 million years. Such staggering amounts of time underscore that the ethical implications of creating such insidious poisons are simply impossible to comprehend. Yet we continue to make more day-by-day. A detailed history of the articles written by Matthew Wald is available on The New York Times website (nytimes.com).
Because of the vast array of unresolved technical issues, there is still no acceptable long-term storage facility for radioactive wastes. While Yucca Mountain in Nevada is under consideration, there are a wide range of unresolved technical and environmental problems. Initially, DOE scientists speculated it would take 80,000 years for radioactive isotopes to move through 80 feet of solid rock, but the core samples from Yucca mountain have documented that the radioactive isotopes generated from the nuclear testing in the 1950s, have managed to penetrated through 80 feet of solid rock is less than 50 years. The real problem for us and our future descendants is having to store the wastes for the next 160 million years.
While Yucca Mountain is years away from being completed, few Americans are aware that in the mean time the U.S. government has simply allowed a private corporation (Chem-Nuclear) to store the waste in a waterlogged area of South Carolina near the small town Snelling, which is about 70 miles south of Columbia. According to The New York Times (March 29, 2004), this 235-acre site has quietly been receiving radioactive wastes more than 30 years. Tim Moore, the 78-year old mayor of Snelling, has proclaimed that, “We’re happy to have the stuff, it doesn’t scare us one bit.” He is eagerly awaiting a decommissioned reactor from California because Chem-Nuclear will earn a $5 million burial fee, and the town of Snelling gets 40% of its budget from taxes on the site and dumping fees. The only problem is that no one has yet figured out how to get the 770-ton reactor from California to South Carolina. In any case, the South Carolina House of Representatives voted to solve its $6 million annual budget shortfall by expanding the amount of waste that is being sent to the facility.
While the mayor of Snelling and the legislators in the South Carolina House are obviously misinformed and unaware of the highly-toxic and mobile nature of the radioactive wastes, the highly-educated senior scientists that work in the nuclear industry and in the federal government are certainly aware of the staggering dangers involved – yet they say nothing. This is far worse than trying to cover-up the Nazi Death camps in World War II, because the death and genetic damage from the radioactive wastes will be passed on to our unsuspecting descendants for the next 160 million years.
Given the vast array of unresolved technical and economic issues associated radioactive waste, the Braun administration will stop the production of any additional wastes. Moreover, given the staggering timeframes involved is storing radioactive wastes, Harry will encourage the American people to pass a constitutional amendment that will make illegal to produce any radioactive wastes that will remain toxic for more than 10 years. This 10-year period is about how long the existing waste storage vessels are able to keep the wastes from seeping and spreading in the natural environment.
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Religion
Harry Braun respects all religious beliefs, because no one can disprove or prove anyone’s personal belief system. As such, the Braun administration will rely on scientific data and not religious views in the establishment of domestic laws and U.S. foreign policy. Details of Harry Braun’s personal views on religion are available in the last chapter of his Phoenix Project book (From Here To Eternity) and in his biographical overview on the BraunforPresident.US website.
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Secrecy Issues
As President, Harry Braun will put an end to the Bush administration’s unprecedented level of secrecy in government, which is a direct contraction to the democratic principles of government. Indeed, Harry Braun will propose an Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that will eliminate the concept of “executive privilege,” which currently allows Presidents to hide the truth by withholding documents and information from the American people. The passage of such an amendment will put an end to the era of closed-door meetings and secret deals. With the exception of obvious matters of military and national security, such as the launch codes for weapons systems, the American people have a right to know what their government and elected officials know, including how policy decisions are made and who is making them.
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Social Issues
Harry Braun does not believe the federal government should be intruding into the private social lives of its citizens regarding issues related to consensual sex, abortion, drugs, marriage, and the right to die in dignity. Harry believes the government should be focused on protecting the American people from the destructive free market corporate behavior that steals money from investors and employees, or contaminates the air, water and land – as well as the American people and ecosystems of Spaceship Earth -- with toxic chemicals.
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Social Security
Social Security was intended to provide a social safety net for American citizens, not a risky investment opportunity. Few Americans realize that the Congress and the Bush administration has financed its daily operations and tax cuts for the rich with the $1.8 trillion in Social Security taxes that were collected to take care of the baby boomers when they retire. Only Harry Braun has a multi-trillion dollar energy and economic plan to make the U.S. energy independent of all fossil and nuclear fuels by mass-producing a wide range of wind and other solar hydrogen production systems. This reindustrialization effort will provide millions of Americans with high-quality manufacturing and technical jobs, which will then ensure that the Social Security and Universal Healthcare systems will remain solvent for the foreseeable future. Thus instead of simply increasing payroll taxes, Harry Braun’s fundamentally better approach will be to supercharge the economy by transforming the U.S. into a Saudi Arabia-class hydrogen energy exporter.
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Taxes
Political democracy is predicated on some level of economic democracy. As such, wealthy individuals should pay a higher tax rate than individuals who work for a living at minimum wage levels. The federal government should be required to balance its budget each year and pay off the national debt that now requires more than $300 billion each year in interest payments. Since even President Bush and the Republican Members of Congress have been unable to control their reckless spending habits, Harry Braun will support a balanced budget amendment to the constitution that will require that our elected officials live within their means. If they need more money, let them raise taxes on the current generation, not the taxpayers of the future. The Braun administration will simplify the tax code and base tax rates on an individual’s income.
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United Nations
Harry Braun views the United Nations (UN) as a critical international body, and he was very much opposed the Bush administration’s efforts to insult the world body because the vast majority of its member nations refused to go along with the Bush administration’s war on Iraq, its reckless environmental policies, or its refusal to acknowledge the International Criminal Court. Given the illegal nature of the Iraq war, it is understandable why Bush would oppose an International Criminal Court. While the UN is not perfect, it is the only global organization that attempts to treat all countries and cultures with a sense of fairness and equality. As such, the Braun administration will work to strengthen the UN and assist the world body as needed.
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Utopia or Oblivion
This generation stands at the threshold of unprecedented developments in science and technology. The great irony is that both utopia and oblivion are evolving exponentially and simultaneously. If oblivion is defined as the destruction of the earth's ocean ecosystems and agricultural life-support systems, then utopia could be defined as humanity having made a successful transition to renewable energy and biological resources. Given the exponential knowledge explosion in molecular biology and computer science in particular; the stunning rate of progress in biotechnology and nanotechnology is rapidly ushering in an age of "designer genes," that will allow individuals to eliminate their biological mechanisms of aging and disease and to select their molecular structure at will with atomic (i.e., atom by atom) precision. As a result of these developments, regardless of what genes one inherits, it will soon be possible for individuals to choose their physical characteristics, and if they want to change some aspect of their molecular structure, they will be able to do so. While some people assume that such developments in molecular biology will only be for the wealthy people, Eric Drexler, author of Engines of Creation: The Coming Age of Nanotechnology, points out in his book that crabgrass has a much more sophisticated molecular structure than a supercomputer, and how expensive is crabgrass? It is a question of knowing how to program the DNA code.
Such developments will certainly have profound and unprecedented effects on legal, medical, and other social systems. However, barring a collapse of the Earth's food production systems such changes are inevitable because technology has a life of its own, which means the stunning advances in computers and biotechnology will continue. While there are those who are fearful of such developments, Harry takes the view that the evolution of Homo Immortalis is the logical and ultimate objective and purpose of the evolution of life on the earth. As Dr, Hans Moravec, the Director of the Robotics Institute of Carnegie-Mellon University observed, “we are on a threshold of change in the universe comparable to the transition from non-life to life.”
Given these insights, it would be most unfortunate if one should die before the designer gene era arrives. Harry Braun’s answer is to be frozen instead of being burned or buried. While there are those who are skeptical that cryogenic preservation could provide a ticket to the future, Harry points out that a person’s death is not permanent unless one’s complex structure of DNA and the molecules of memory are lost. As such, if one’s molecules of memory are preserved, at some point in the not too distant future, one can be “reborn” in the rapidly approaching era of molecular medicine and nanotechnology.
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Welfare and Poverty
The most important factor in breaking the cycle of welfare and poverty is having an educational system that provides high-quality instruction to all students. This can be accomplished by having the best teachers funded to help produce high-quality educational programs on CD/video formats that students can then use at home or at daycare centers. The Braun administration will modify the America Corp program to allow large numbers of individuals to relocate to rural organic farming and educational communities where they will be able learn how to create high-quality food in a healthy environment while earning a respectable income in the process. However, the biggest welfare queens are not poor people taking advantage of the food stamp program, but the largest corporations in the world, including the oil, coal, and nuclear industries that then avoid paying taxes by moving many of their operations offshore, where slave labor and a lack of environmental rules increase corporate profits.
These are the issues that the Phoenix Project Platform has addressed in the Presidential election of 2004. We are at the threshold of both utopia and oblivion, and the decisions made in this next election could well determine which future evolves.
