AN URBAN AGENDA FOR THE NEW MILLENIUM

Polipundit linked to a great map of the elections results; this one is in NOT merely by color (red versus blue), but also has a "3D" effect which amplifies the fact that the Left-wing Democrat Party is really NOT a national party, but ONLY the majority party of America's biggest cities. This fact is further buttressed by a poll in today's NYTIMES by Edison Media Research; this poll revealed that the Democrat Party got 60% of the votes cast in cities with over 500,000 people - the ONLY size city or town that they carried!

This map (and this tally in this poll) indicates not just where the Democrats ARE NOW, but where the GOP must take the fight over the next few years if we are to finally irradicate the failed politics and policies of the Left-wing.

We must take the fight to the cities - and we can do this by merely articulating AN URBAN AGENDA FOR THE NEW MILLENIUM which is based on the core principles of the GOP: empowerment, opportunity, and ownership.

(1-a) Push for school chocie and school vouchers. These empower parents and disempower the teacher's unions (and other unions - like custodians and principals) which are bleeding school budgets without improving the academic results. (1 -b) We should also make all school systems accountable to mayors - not school boards - so that there is polical accounatbility for results. We do this by making federal aid to schools conditional on these two changes.

(2) Privatize public housing. This uplifts the working poor and makes them independent stakeholders, instead of people dependent on the state. Jack Kemp floated this idea 20 years ago; it's time to dust it off and implement it - perhaps by bringing him back as HUD Secretary! We need to ramp up low cost loans for this purpose and dispatch co-op advisors and incentvize local general contractors to underatke much needed improvements to these newly privately held assets.

(3) Incentivize economic activity by cutting taxes on new businesses in the cities - and make this a federal/state/local partnership by making the federal portion of tax incentives dependent on equal particpation of the state and ther city. This would be a twist on revenue sharing; this would be "tax-cut sharing." This would incentivize the states and cities to "buy into" supply-side economics (which have been proven to work).

BOTTOM-LINE: BLUE cities all have higher unemployment, and lower high school graduation rates, and more crime than RED counties. This is in part due to several decades of failing Left-wing policies foisted on the the cities by the Democrat machines merely to get votes.

The aggressive 3-point GOP program for the cities will end the decline of the cities, improve the lives of city-dwellers, and end the Left-wing Demcorat Party's cynical and demogoguic stranglehold on the cities.

That's a win-win-win for everyone.