Your 2020 vision needed now

Each one of us is concerned for our country’s future. We all want to get to a better, more prosperous and peaceful place. We want blue skies, bird song and bountiful harvests. The question always is, how do we get there? The devil is in the details. More, how do we get there together?

Look past November, beyond January’s inauguration and beyond the next four years. 2030 is only ten years away. And we would be remiss not to commit to 2050 or to not be concerned about the 22nd century.

So, put, not your thinking caps or even your hopeful caps on, but strap on your visionary caps. Advance past who you want to win the presidency and focus hard on the policies of the next ten years that are needed to save us. Not save our opinions or our version of the facts but save this very precious planet we call home and its ever increasing number of inhabitants.

Look past your grandchildren, if you are of that age, to their grandchildren. Face squarely all the issues, starting with building that wall and immigration, to China and tariffs. What about real, living wage jobs? Fires, floods, hurricanes, don’t quibble about whether it is climate change. Extreme weather is on the increase. There is no disputing that. Ask the insurance companies.

The crisis of health insurance needs to be solved, with or without a pandemic. How to make it universal and affordable? Or, what is your policy for covering the great unwashed if you do not believe in universal coverage?

How do we get through the pandemic?

Are you better if than you were for years ago? What will it take for you to be better off four years from now? What will it take for your children’s children to be better off 40 years from now?

This is our worst hard time, as tough in the present moment for us as the dust bowl was for our Okie ancestors, as Timothy Egan recounted in his history subtitled “The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl.” We are going to survive this hard time with grit, hard work, imagination but most of all compassion.

There needs to be policies that will lead to plans that will direct programs that will be executed to provide our saner, better future. What are those policies?

You are tired of hearing this editor’s pronunciations, analyses and assessments of this moment that we are so mightily struggling through? Good. Weigh in and speak your truths, your hopes and your mind.

Write the Weekly News and tell your neighbors the policy that route the road map to a safe, same, healthy and happy future.

Policies of your political candidates, policies you wish your candidates were championing, as long as they navigate our getting to common ground together, they will be printed in the Weekly News. That, and outline one policy per 300 word summary.

There are four October issues coming up. Get your policy into print next month. Help us all out.

These pages are always open to you. They are open to you now.

Guidelines: This is not a Blue exercise or a Red exercise but a U.S. citizen exercise. Actually it is an all human beings exercise.

No magical thinking allowed. Think imaginatively and creatively, but red and blue together, how do we get to an undivided, hopeful future? Is it possible?

That is my hope. But what is the path you want us all walking together?

Tell us how your favorite candidate will get us to a saner, healthier, calmer and cleaner future. Please.