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By Root 398 0

desperately strapped city could prove, absolutely prove, that every week, every month that went by without spending thousands to maintain the subways would eventually cost the city millions. That’s the kind of public, deficit spending that makes sense in a recession. Of course it’s also the kind of spending that leads to pork-barrel abuses, with dippy projects that are a waste of the public’s money going to the districts of powerful congresspeople who run important committees. Citizens have to watch them like hawks for that kind of thing. Keeping an eye on the Corps of Engineers alone is enough to occupy a citizen full-time.

But look what you can do with smart infrastructure investment. The New Growth Initiative, a partnership between progressive think tanks and labor unions, points out, “Energy independence can be significantly advanced through smart regional infrastructure investments in energy, transportation, wastewater and other systems. These large-scale public investments create real employment, while improving services, and saving money in ongoing operations and maintenance. These investments are also good for the environment, reducing energy consumption, vehicle miles traveled and air pollution.” You can improve the quality of life, provide jobs, and spur the economy simultaneously. Beats the hell out of eliminating dividend taxes for rich investors.

Also near the top of the economic list: end corporate welfare. Getting the porkers out of the creek is always a popular notion and can be backed up with a tasty array of examples of obscene misallocation of taxpayer money to well-wired corporate special interests. In political terms, this is shooting fish in a barrel.

Even more popular: outlaw offshore tax havens. Close the loopholes that permit American corporations to use mailboxes on offshore islands to avoid paying American taxes. In the meantime, prohibit all American corporations that have offshore tax dodges from bidding on any government contract, as the late Paul Wellstone proposed.

Take the putrid Cheney National Energy Policy and bury it. Instead, we need a huge push for energy conservation. It works. Look at the record. We also need to push for renewable power sources that will diminish our dependence on Middle East oil. This is truly a no-brainer. Wind power is already competitive at market prices. The CAFE standards that require automakers to build cars with higher gas mileage might also be taken seriously.

There are myriad other areas in which change is desperately needed. One begins with political and economic reform because one can accomplish nothing else without them. Another area in which catastrophe is imminent is health care. (And we’re optimists.) This will not keep. The system is not just developing cracks, huge chunks of it have already fallen out. It is not necessary to reinvent the wheel here—every other advanced country has some system of national health insurance; we can do the old blue book exercise of compare and contrast. Which system seems to work best? Which would work best in this country? As anyone who has ever studied it knows, nothing about changing the health-care system is simple: even if one opts for what sounds like a simple solution—single-payer health insurance—making it work involves untold complexities. It’s quite possible the French have the best system, combining single-payer with freedom of choice for patients. (We could always call it the Freedom system.)

On corporate reform, about which nothing has been done in the wake of Enron, WorldCom, etc., the specific steps are painfully obvious:

• Treat stock options as expenses, under rigorous accounting practices, not some waffling halfway measure.

• Build an absolute wall between research analysts and investment banks, with heavy legal punishment for breaching it.

• Prohibit accounting firms from providing consulting services while auditing a company’s books. Can you believe this is still not illegal?

• Regulate the special-purpose entities that Enron used for off-balance-sheet transactions.

• Strengthen whistleblower