100 Hours Mark the Change

...and don't forget the butterfly nets for Bush, etal.

TomPaine.com - 100 Hours Mark the Change:

In the three fleet weeks before the president’s State of the Union address, the new Congress will put down a clear marker that the times, they are changing. The conservative era is over. Common sense is no longer exiled from the nation’s capital.

If the first female Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, is successful, the House will start by passing tough new ethics rules to apply to themselves. The new majority will then pass the first increase in the minimum wage in a decade. They will vote to cut interest rates on student loans in half. They’ll empower Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices. They’ll roll back a portion of the obscene subsidies that go to big oil and use the money to fund renewable energy. They’ll vote to unleash stem cell research from the zealots. They’ll make common sense investments in homeland security.

And, if they are smart, Speaker Pelosi and Senate leader Harry Reid will join with Democratic governors to invite the president to join them in launching a 10-year, concerted drive for energy independence—an Apollo Plan for Energy, that invests in new energy and new efficiency, mobilizes science and technology, generates new jobs in America, redresses global warming, while reducing our dependence on Persian Gulf oil.

All this will take place in 100 hours, before the befuddled president gives his State of the Union address. The slim new Democratic majority in the House will demonstrate that they heard what voters were saying. They will take immediate steps to clean up Washington, and turn the agenda from the dictates of corporate lobbies to the concerns—wages, the cost of college and health care, soaring energy prices—that Americans worry about over their kitchen tables at night.