OMFSM YAYS!

The last book in the Earth's Children series by Jean M. Auel, The Land of Painted Caves, came out yesterday! And the post library is gonna order it as an audiobook (and of course in hardcover because that's how most people read books :P).

The timing is again coincidentally fortuitous. The last time I read the series (and the first), I had just finished the fourth book, The Plains of Passage, when the fifth book, The Shelters of Stone came out. This was right around the time I graduated from high school, in the early summer of 2002.

And now I'm reading it again and *poof!* almost ten years later, the next (and last) book is out!

I got hooked on this series long before I knew what a "Mary Sue" was, and in the re-reading I'm still enjoying it, though also snarking a bit. :P

Anyone else excited for the final installment? And if you're jumping right into it, please, no spoilers. I've just started the first one in my re-reading.

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Some ideas.

I was talking with (LJ)lady_blue_peach and got onto the subject of stuff the government could do to save money and/or stimulate the economy. Well, I started rambling is more like it. Here's what I've thought of, and no, none of these are my original ideas, just ones I'd heard about that I could think of off the top of my head.

1. Spend more on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, food stamps, and welfare, not less! People who qualify for those programs are people who aren't going to sit on that money. It won't be saved or invested, it'll be spent, and that helps everyone from the cashiers at the grocery store to the factory workers who make the stuff to the farmers/miners/whatnot who grow/mine/whatnot the basic materials. Food stamps, for example, generate $1.73 into the general economy.

1a. This is also where a public option would come in very handy. One you'd immediately get upon birth or naturalization, which you could opt out of if you wanted private insurance instead.

2. Getting rid of paper $1 bills and instead using coins could save $5.5 billion over the next 30 years, according to an article linked to by Ezra Klein.

3. Ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I won't get into the logistics of how because I honestly don't know, but I do know we're spending boatloads of money and still military pay is absolute crap.

3a. Yes, there's also Libya, but this time there are rebels actually asking for Western help and it's not just the US but the UN and NATO so we're not going in cowboy-style.

4. Ending the Bush tax cuts.

5. Closing tax loopholes and making the rich and the big corporations actually pay taxes. The way things are now, Warren Buffett's secretary pays more in taxes (as in dollar amount) than he does!

6. INFRASTRUCTURE. Our roads and bridges and dams have been in bad shape since about the "Reagan Revolution" when the government decided that government shouldn't do anything but police uteri and give taxpayer money to millionaires and billionaires. So now there's lots and lots of repair work that need to be done, plus new roads and bridges and such. $2 or 3 million trillion worth, if I remember correctly, and that's a lot of jobs over a period of...a decade or more, wouldn't you think? That much work would take awhile!

6a. HIGH SPEED MOTHERFUCKING RAIL. All over the lower 48! It'd do wonders for business travel, lighten the loads on those newly-repaired roads, and increase interstate commerce and tourism.

So, my friends! In what ways am I wrong in what I've listed above? What would you add? What's the likelihood of any of this shit actually happening?

Edit, 4/1: Waste ash from coal could save billions in repairing U.S. bridges & roads. Excellent!

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