By the People, For the People: AlterNet Readers Send Their Messages to Obama

By AlterNet Staff, AlterNet. Posted January 9, 2009.

Invest in Industry and Solar and Wind Power

By: R. Heymann

We must invest productive capital in the United States of America. We must rebuild our civilian goods manufacturing capability. A country without the ability to create and sustain advanced manufacturing facilities is a country that wheels and deals in phony "engineered products" (read: Wall Street). We must stop thinking in terms of Eternal Warfare. This fallacious policy is driving us into bankruptcy. We must think in terms of solar and wind power and invest accordingly. We must think in terms of national health insurance, as have all Western European countries going back to the days of Bismarck's Prussia. We must develop an industrial policy, and we must learn that planning is not a socialist disease but the only way to create good-paying jobs and secure a good and happy future for our children.

Ban Torture, Fire Blackwater, and Get Our Troops Out of Iraq

By: Carol Marsh

Dear President-Elect Obama,

Please ban torture, kidnapping and rendition and order Guantanamo and other secret prisons closed. Please reinstate the Bill of Rights and the rule of law. Restore habeas corpus. Fire Blackwater.

I appreciate your plans to switch to clean, renewable fuels while rebuilding the economy with green infrastructure. Please strengthen the Endangered Species Act, and halt the killing of wolves, even in Alaska. Especially in Alaska.

Get our troops out of Iraq. In Afghanistan, please stop bombing civilians and focus on hearts and minds, building schools and clinics and roads using local people.

End the War on Drugs

By: Gene Tinelli, MD, PhD

Immediately establish a Presidential Commission to examine our current drugs policy, asking former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders to be its Chairperson. Bias the selection of Committee members from those in the public health and harm reduction communities. We need to end the current war on drugs, especially since this is not a war on drugs but a war on people, particularly poor people of color. Make the public health system, rather than the criminal justice system, our priority in this area.

Bailout America's Homeless

By: Ruben Botello

Barack Obama should provide jobs, housing, healthcare and other vital services for all our nation's homeless during his first 100 days as President because it is the homeless who are suffering most during these hard times. The entire weight of our nation's economic crisis is on their shoulders as these destitute Americans struggle to survive from day-to-day. If Wall Street and major corporations need bailouts, imagine how much more of a bailout or rescue plan America's homeless need. I have yet to see or hear anyone express any significant concern about the plight of America's homeless during these hard times.

Investigate the Crimes of George W. Bush

By: Eldon McMath

The most important thing that should be done, not just in the first 100 days, but on the first day, is for the new Attorney General to appoint a special prosecutor to look into the crimes of the George W. Bush administration. Otherwise, we should take the words "and justice for all" out of our preamble.The next thing that should be done is for the President to begin a WPA style work program and create jobs for the millions that have lost their jobs during the Bush administration. The second thing that needs to be done is to pass single payer health insurance, administered by the Government for the purpose of taking the health insurance costs off the shoulders of businesses and workers. Health insurance of this type would cost a small fraction of what it now cost and people who are currently without insurance would be covered.

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