Just roll it back, say no to deregulation.

Restoring good paying jobs and upward mobility to all Americans is the key to restoring the health of our country. The spiral of downward mobility must be reversed immediately, and rolling back the tax code to pre 1980 levels immediately is one of the critical keys.

Just say no to the Republican proposals to make things worse for all but the rich. No to continuing Bush Era tax breaks to the richest Americans. No to incentives and loopholes for giant corporations. No to speculation as the foundation of modern day Wall Street. No to the perverted definition of “investment” which embraces race track like betting and crooked bookies as their purveyors. And no to the excessive and /or hidden costs and fees that are syphoning the cream out of the finances of everyday Americans.

Not to mention, no to cuts to investments in our country's future like education, infrastructure, honoring our promises to seniors including Social Security (which they paid for as deferred compensation), or Medicare
and Medicaid for the neediest Americans.

Put in the most basic terms, just say no to the unabashed legislator supported greed which has taken over our country and is milking it dry.

It is time to restore fairness and equity by rolling back banking and corporate regulations to pre-1980 levels.

Why the proposed American Chinese currency manipulation bill is against our interests.

The Currency Exchange Rate Oversight Reform Act of 2011, the proposal to impose currency-related trade measures against China or other countries with undervalued currencies makes no sense for two major reasons:

- First, if China revalues its currency upward, it will dramatically increase  the value of our debt to them, doing us far more harm than good; in short, it is counter productive.

- The second is centered on the concept that it's far better to define the core problems and create meaningful solutions than to resort to band aid fixes. The core problem is that China's environmental protection, human
rights and nationally subsidized industrial policies create a massive and immoral cost advantage. Equalization is the solution; the creation of an environmental and humanitarian equalization tariff is the vehicle.

Although ill-defined,  there is a dollar value connected to protecting our environment and quality of life, and at least short term it is expensive. As a country we have decided it is money well spent, and we must aggressively protect that decision; at least within our borders.

There is no question that countries which do not respect these values, while massively subsidizing exports, have a huge cost advantage in international commerce. We need to make adjustments in order to compete with them economically, and contrary to the beliefs of the short sighted, this does not mean lowering our standards to meet theirs. It does mean punishing the "dumping" which has all but killed many of our core manufacturing industries, including solar energy.

Obviously, we cannot continue to subsidize these nations at the expense of our own; the goal has to be the creation of a level playing field. It is my opinion that as a nation, we need to immediately do the calculations needed to define the real and total costs of sound environmental policy, fair working conditions and good wages, and use these numbers as a factual basis for creating a meaningful solution to inequitably priced imports.

Based on those calculations, the solution is the creation of an environmental and human exploitation levy to be placed on all countries who want access to our markets and whose humanitarian polices are below those we have adopted. For those who share our values, there would be little or no levy, for those who do not, the costs would be substantial. The proceeds would then be used to fund national technology initiatives.

A related issue is countries who engage in espionage in order to gain our country's military and industrial secrets. This is extremely expensive and must be aggressively rooted out and punished.  In the case of China, this
has been particularly pervasive. Our only possibilities for compensation is through the seizure of their assets which is impractical, or assessing large, long term, punitive levys on their goods and services while aggressively enforcing our anti-dumping laws.

In my opinion, these actions would force countries like China, India and others to clean up their acts in order to compete fairly in international markets; while helping us attain the critically important goals of restoring our onshore manufacturing base and good paying jobs, the middle class, and upward mobility.