Priorities--From the Start

Jon Stewart asked Barack Obama just before the election whether he was sure he really wanted the job. Certainly things in America and the world have rapidly changed since Obama first stood on the steps of the Illinois State House in Springfield and announced his candidacy almost two years ago. And as we get closer to Inauguration Day, the Bush administration seems to be going a little wacko again: bombing civilians in Afghanistan, bombing into Pakistan, and getting too close to the borders with Syria for the health of the planet.

With just 76 days left, the Bush administration is capable of doing anything.

What should the new president's priorities be? We have millions more Americans about to be thrown out of their homes in foreclosure; we have a planet that is rapidly warming and disappearing resources, drinking water, and fossil fuels; we have an economy that has collapsed from deregulation, greed, and mismanagement; we have an educational system that is no longer serving the interests of either the families whose children attend, the teachers who earn a livelihood, or the nation which needs an educated workforce; our infrastructure of roads and bridges is deteriorating; our health care system is bankrupting families and small businesses while not making modern medicine accessible to the people who really need it; and our voting system is so flawed that it is inevitable to have another hanging chad, contested election like we had in Florida in 2000.

We can no longer afford to engage in an arms race, especially since the arms race is with Russia once again and China whose might we haven't even imagined as its economy expands. I often think about Star Wars and how the Rebellion beat the evil Empire despite its Death Star with small, targeted strikes. That is how our new renegade enemies will keep us alert, but the new president hopefully will not use fear as Bush and Cheney did.

Then there is the little matter of prosecuting the officials in the Bush administration responsible for the war on terror that includes such techniques as torture, rendition, and illegal surveillance. In the documentary "Boogie Man" about Lee Atwater, it is suggested that if Bill Clinton had prosecuted the Bush I administration for its role in Iran Contra, the architects of the Bush II administration would all have been in jail or disgraced. We might have avoided the last eight years.

We can't wait for President Obama to set his priorities. We have to set our own in our own communities. We saw a network of coalitions working together on the ground to elect this intelligent and composed man. We met neighbors and made new friends. We reached across labels. So why don't we start at home?

Why don't we start now?

Priorities

Look at the underlying values of the two candidates, not the hype, not the spin from the media. What do you see? What do you feel? Is the direction we want to go driven by greed and compulsive individual accumulation? Do we want just another battle cry? Or is our future, and the futures of our children and grandchildren tied instead to a greater sense of seeing our country and our planet as a community?

Is our future tied to the necessity that we learn how to live with each other, that we learn to listen, that we develop and encourage cooperation and empathy?

Bill Quigley is a law professor at Loyola University, New Orleans. His work in New Orleans before, during, and the aftermath of Katrina makes him a courageous activist. Today he posted on truthout.org: Twenty Questions: Social Justice Quiz 2008.

Let's talk about the Test in terms of the priorities that the two major presidential candidates are bringing to the debate about the future.

OK, ready to take a preview of the test?

How many people were killed last year by terrorists? 22,000 and over half of these victims were Muslims in countries other than this one. How many people were killed by poverty and malnutrition? 25,000 a day!!!

So, are we going to vote from that fearful place, you know that place when you fantacize after watching too much television that the next time you drive to the mall, you might get blown up by a terrorist car bomb?

Or should we be voting to assure that we will be using our collective intelligence to end the unnecessary suffering and hopelessness most of the people on the planet experience because they don't have enough to feed their children?

Obama or McCain?

What proportion of the homeless are children? One in four. One in four!!! Now, everyone agrees, except for John McCain, that we have a housing crisis brought on by deregulation of the credit industry and greed. This is the same industry that once red-lined African American neighborhoods, preventing hard working families from locating fair and affordable credit. After deregulation, African American neighborhoods were targeted by unscrupulous mortgage brokers freed from restraints who were paid commissions based upon a percentage over credit adjusted rate. Credit adjusted rate is a race neutral formula that calculates a borrower's credit risk. Mortgage brokers in communities of color were paid to inflate the interest rates charged on home mortgages above credit risk by giving them higher commissions. And guess what? They were very race conscious in choosing in which neighborhoods to inflate the cost of credit.

Mortgage foreclosure brings about homelessness. 2.1 million foreclosures are expected this year. That means 2 million children will be dislocated.

In 1968 the Fair Housing Act was passed to protect people from discrimination in housing and mortgage lending. There hasn't been a fair housing suit brought by the federal government since 2000. Yet 2008 will be the year where the foreclosure rate of African American families will be the greatest in history. Where are the priorities of the Bush administration? Who has voted with Bush 90% of the time these last eight years?

Who will you vote for: Obama or McCain? Take the social justice test and take a look at the candidates' priorities.