IT'S TABULA RASA time, when the year is fresh with possibility. Soon enough, all the bright hopes and determined resolutions will be jaded and worn, so we take this day to close our eyes and hope for the best. Surveying our world on the birth of a new year, we find eight candles to wish upon.
1. We wish for a presidential campaign debate that informs, inspires, and motivates. Naive? Maybe not. With the exception of the immigration issue, which has been cheaply exploited to rile up nativist passions, the primary campaign has so far been reasonably civilized. Perhaps the candidates are just holding their fire until the fall, but we hope the eventual nominees are wise enough to know that voters have had quite enough, thank you, of the scapegoating, sliming, simplistic campaigns of the past.
2. We hope that everyone gets to vote and all votes are properly counted. Seven years and billions of dollars after the 2000 election fiasco, the nation can be guardedly optimistic that the most egregious flaws in the way votes are cast and counted are at last being addressed. Without falling for wild conspiracy theories, however, it's clear that too many states still have unreliable systems. Electronic voting machines that crash or won't start; insufficient and untrained poll workers; long lines; voters turned away or forced to cast provisional ballots; mistrust of election officials because of party affiliation - these were all still evident in last year's midterm elections. There is no excuse for them persisting into 2008. The bare minimum: Every voting machine in every county in America should leave a paper trail.
3. We wish that Governor Patrick and the state's legislative leaders stop feuding and start fixing what ails Massachusetts. That means increasing revenues the state needs just to maintain the status quo, much less achieve the ambitious advances in early childhood education, biotechnology development, and capital improvements Patrick has on his own wish list. We think destination casinos are a reasonable way to recapture revenue currently leaking to other states, but if there is no appetite for that, legislative leaders need to offer an alternative. Increase the gasoline tax, close the corporate loopholes Patrick has identified, pressure cities and towns to adopt efficiencies in health and pension benefits, or reorder priorities to eliminate spending elsewhere. Anything less is irresponsible government.
4. On New Year's, revelers often toast to good health, so we wish for the success of the state's landmark experiment with universal healthcare. The biggest threat to that success is cost: of the care provided, and of the insurance plans offered. Some 300,000 (and rising) newly insured residents must be able to afford their premiums, so the healthcare plans need to keep their premiums low. This in turn means that the state's first-rate healthcare providers need to show restraint in their annual rate increases. Finally, the state needs to come up with sufficient cash to subsidize the mandatory plans for those of modest means (see wish number 3).
5. We hope for a soft landing to the nation's economic woes. This means the banks, Wall Street, and federal officials need to take responsibility for what they allowed to happen: a mortgage loan crisis that threatens the solvency of perhaps 2 million homeowners, with resounding ripple effects washing through the whole economy. Relaxing interest rates may help avoid a debilitating credit squeeze and avoid recession. Just as important is keeping homeowners who were lured through deceptive or greedy practices into unsustainable mortgages from falling into ruin. That is the best way for consumer spending and confidence overall to be restored. The alternative is a sickening downward spiral of default and despair.
6. We wish for an end to violence. The conflagrations in Pakistan and Iraq are just the most vivid and immediate examples. Desolating, senseless violence continues unabated from Darfur to Dorchester. Tribal, ethnic, religious, or gang hatreds can be blamed for much of the killing. But the conditions that allow these hatreds to breed are similar everywhere: dead-end lives of poverty, ignorance, and powerlessness. This is the pragmatic reason to support public expenditures - on everything from foreign aid to preschool education to microcredit to addiction counseling - that are often derided as soft-hearted charity. Without justice, there is rarely peace.
7. We hope mankind makes peace with the Earth. The blue planet is under assault, not just from the climate change provoked by global warming, but from extractions of resources that extend the sere reach of deserts; from the wanton dumping of toxics into the water and air; and from a world population that is growing more slowly but still aggravates disease and environmental degradation. The United States has lagged, not led, the world in finding ways to repair the damage. A good step on that path would be for Congress to pass, and President Bush to sign, a strong bill establishing a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions. But overall, we wish for a reckoning by the richest nation on Earth with its ponderous, overdue debt.
8. We hope transparency and civic engagement make a comeback. The last seven years have featured the most secretive government since J. Edgar Hoover plotted against John Lennon. Under the convenient cloak of national security, the administration has sealed presidential records, authorized warrantless wiretapping, muzzled dissent, manipulated government websites, classified or reclassified an unprecedented number of documents, and presided over record-breaking denials and backlogs of Freedom of Information Act requests. It's a waiting game in which the forces of censorship and secrecy hope the citizens will wear out first. This won't happen if the bonds between Americans and a vigilant free press are strengthened. We hope that's not too much to wish for.
