In no particular order (and with no particular forethought):
1) The Big Three need access to credit, sure; it’s a huge industry, credit is tight, and an underrecognized chunk of their business is tied up in financing loans, investing pensions, etc. — GM is really a bank with a side business in automotive manufacturing. But instead of a huge bridge loan for token gestures, why can’t the U.S. gov’t really help them by taking over their pension and health care responsibilities outright and using that system + Medicare as a basis for a national health plan? The auto industry’s outlook changes instantly, and we don’t have to build our health care infrastructure from scratch.
2) Philadelphia has a huge budget crisis, and the most controversial part of its cost-cutting plan involves scrapping neighborhood libraries. How about instead of closing those libraries, you move other neighborhood-based government offices into the libraries? Public health offices, places to pull permits, bill payment centers, etc. Close or lease those offices, and keep the libraries open (even with reduced space and staff).
3) All government stimulus to the states should be paid directly to the universities, all of it, and a large part of the infrastructure spending should be devoted to creating new universities in cities and towns all across the country, innovative universities, teachers’ universities, alternative energy engineering research universities, cinema and philosophy and modernist literature universities, poetry universities, public service universities, tranny prostitute computer-training universities, Ford and GM and Chrysler universities. We should consecrate ourselves to higher education, to building libraries and archives and hospitals and research centers and to hire, hire, and hire professors and administrators and staff like the G.I. bill was on and the returning vets and their baby boomer kids had seen nothing, nothing compared to this.
