Help Wanted: New U.S. Leaders

With staggering out of control U.S. deficits, President Obama signed the "Budget Control Act" which is anything but budget control. Yet this was the best Democrats and Republicans could offer. I'm embarrassed by the fraud this bill is and concerned for the future of America. I suggest we Americans hire new leaders using the following criteria:

1) Leaders must be capable of standing up to lobbyists in order to act in the best interests of the American people. This means no more lobbyist contributions, taking only public campaign financing, which 2008 presidential candidate Obama pledged to do before ignoring that pledge.

2) Leaders must be capable of confronting the military industrial complex and remove us from the all the wars before they finish the job of bankrupting us morally and financially.

3) Leaders must be capable of protecting Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and other vital public programs. Funding will come in part from the massive savings of ending the wars and in slashing the size of the military industrial complex spending. We will have to make do with less weapons of mass destruction, less jet fighters, less ships and submarines and less drones as we already spend more on the military than the rest of the world combined spends on theirs.

4) Leaders must be capable of balancing the budget now, not in empty claims of doing it in 10-15 years, long after the U.S. is bankrupt. Of course this will necessitate new revenues which could come from eliminating special tax privileges for oil companies and other giant corporations and from our richest citizens paying the tax rate they did before the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003.

The U.S. desperately needs new leadership, leaders that will actually practice "transparency" and "change" and will rally Americans to confront the enormity of their mounting problems and unite us to sacrifice and solve them. None of the current leaders have shown this capability and it's time we do what other well run organizations do, bring in new leadership.

Dick