At the Straight Talk website you can download the 90-page “Straight Talk 2006: Common Sense for the Common Good” book as a PDF file. Some excerpts:
An Economy That Works
President Bush boasts about a glittering economy — jobs are up, profits are up, stock prices are up, and home ownership is setting new records. Most Americans think he’s out of touch. They live with wages that aren’t keeping up with costs. They see good jobs getting shipped abroad, while companies are cutting back on health care, pensions, and other benefits. They worry their children won’t fare as well as they did. The Bush White House thinks they just haven’t heard the good news.
And this is the economy at its best. The conservatives in Washington have mortgaged the country — running up record deficits and record foreign debts — without making the investments vital to future prosperity. That bill is starting to come due. It is time for a dramatically different direction.
New Energy for America
Soaring gas prices, record oil company profits, Katrina and catastrophic climate change, soldiers dying in Iraq’s deserts, and unsustainable trade deficits — Bush’s Big Oil energy policy is running us toward ruin. It’s time to change course.
We need to launch a concerted drive for energy independence. In 1961 President Kennedy challenged us to send a man to the moon within a decade and launched the Apollo plan to make it happen. Now we need a similar vision — an Apollo initiative for energy independence, mobilizing science and technology, and investing in energy efficiency and alternative energy.
The benefits are immense. We can create jobs, capture growing global green energy markets, eliminate our dependence on Persian Gulf oil, slow the rush towards global warming, reduce our trade deficit, and improve the health of our children. It’s time to act.
