Matt Miller writes
a very interesting and thoroughly detailed column in The Washington Post about the type of stump speech a pragmatic centrist third party candidate would make. Although I don't agree with
his ideal notion of a third party, this column really puts some cold hard truths out there:
On Education:
"
We’ve been tinkering at the edges when it comes to school improvement, because we’ve ignored the most important question: Who should teach? While the world’s highest-performing school systems — those in places like Singapore, Finland and South Korea — recruit their teachers from the top third of their graduating class, we recruit ours from the middle and bottom thirds, especially for schools in poor neighborhoods. This “strategy” isn’t working. Up through the 1970s, the quality of our teacher corps was in effect subsidized by discrimination, because women and minorities didn’t have many other job opportunities. All that’s changed, but as career options have multiplied for those who used to become teachers, salaries haven’t kept pace to attract top talent."
On Health Care:
"
We need to make sure every person in America has basic health coverage that doesn’t break the bank. To achieve that, Democrats must accept a private insurance industry and Republicans must accept that some people can’t afford decent policies on their own. This “grand bargain” is about liberals agreeing that innovation shouldn’t be regulated out of U.S. health care and conservatives agreeing that justice has to be regulated into it. The 50 million uninsured may seem invisible, but today their ranks are equal to the combined populations of Oklahoma, Connecticut, Iowa, Mississippi, Kansas, Kentucky, Arkansas, Utah, Oregon, Nevada, New Mexico, West Virginia, Nebraska, Idaho, Maine, New Hampshire, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Montana, Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Alaska, Vermont and Wyoming. Would America turn its back on these 25 states if they all lacked basic health coverage? That is what we’ve been doing for decades."
On the Financial Markets:
"
The banking system is now more concentrated than it was before the financial crisis. There are two ways to avoid the “too big to fail” threat that still exists. We can limit the risks these big banks take — though regulators don’t have a great track record of getting this right. The most important thing we can do, therefore, is make sure big banks have enough capital to absorb any conceivable losses. Yet bank lobbyists are now swarming Washington to keep capital requirements low – in part because higher levels of capital reduce what top bankers can pay themselves. Their bonuses are often based on such metrics as a firm’s “return on equity,” which can be goosed by continually piling debt atop a tiny equity base. That’s Wall Street’s plan. Heads, I win; tails, taxpayers lose. Again."
His idea for turning the national election into a lottery with a $10 million grand prize is definitely out-of-the-box, as is the recommendation to lower the voting age to 15. All-in-all, it's definitely worth the time to read this article all the way through and see how far you actually are from these ideas, regardless of your political ideology.
