Merry Christmas. May your gifts include a happy, healthy, and prosperous New Year.

Granted, after decades of being marketed into losing the meaningful meaning of Christmas, it has become harder to pay for healthy and save for prosperous New Years.

My sister, Marlene, sends the same good wishes. She continues battling her diabetic complications but that does not stop her from computer classes, books on tape, and getting out as she can. Recently, an excellent female doctor removed a small malignant tissue from her breast.

Thank God, our parents had the wisdom and jobs to keep extra insurance policies on my sister through her youth. And thank Congress that some Social Security, Medical, and Medicare programs were pushed into America’s public policy. May enough of you push your representatives to establish health reform that does not “Trickle Down” but addresses regular people’s needs.

Remember how foreign to many of your parents credit cards, a fake Santa Claus coded into plastic, were? Little did The Graduate know that string pullers behind “Trust me” and just “Go shop” were sucking hard working middle America’s cash into their 27%+ fees on little plastic cards on which only the rich and connected profited. Then when that connected crowd convinced enough little Christmas tree buyers to buy into the big rich corporations and their lobbyists “We know best” mantra, they went out and made even more money on credit derivatives and default swap gimmickries.

Surprisingly, it took almost three decades to couple the “Supply Side…Trickle down Voo-Do Economics… Go shopping… Credit card mentality…Trust us… Self regulation is all you need…” buffoonery with our practical ignorance of world and domestic needs to morph us into a crippled economy, which is now geared to greed and financial gimmickry; rather than building and practical ingenuity.

In California, for totally disabled people like my sister, those illogical policies have caused her monthly $72 state disability check to fall to $6.00 a month. Meanwhile, the everyday CEO Santas, who are supposed to insure that all Americans have a shot at year round health through their insurance shops, received total compensations of:

· $124.8 million in 2005, William McGuire of United Health Group

· $28,82 million in 2006, H. Edward Hanway of Signa Health Care

· $24.3 million in 2008, Ron Williams of Aetna Health

These pricey for-profit health insurance shops employ a bevy of insurance rule-enforcing elves at a 30% + administrative overhead cost. In contrast, the Director of Medicate, whose administrative cost runs from 1.5 – 3.0%, had total compensation of $145,600 in 2004.

As the country reels around a depression, go figure which of the above elves and Santas you would like providing for the health and prosperity of you and yours?

As cold air and snowflakes fly, some of us may groan about extra layers, chilling fingers, and heating charges, which pales next to the cold missions our troops face in Afghanistan and Iraq. While many struggle to deal with the lost opportunities piling up in this Season of Giving, it is easy to forget those who have lost loved ones and now fight to save you and yours from losing the same, which brings me to Gold Star Mom Nadia McCaffrey.

As some of you know, Hospice worker Nadia lost her son, who had volunteered into the National Guard after 911, when the Iraqi troops he had been training murdered him and Lt. Andre Tyson. http://www.indybay.org/news/2006/03/1811967.php Since the loss of her only son, she has dedicated her life and non-existent fortune not to attacking the politics and lies that led to the war, but to helping build long term healing for the 30+% of the troops who come home with various post traumatic stress disorders (PTSD) disorders. www.veteransvillage.org

Nadia has walked the lost loved ones walk. She has tasted the PTSDs of her sons’ friends. She has taken into her little Tracy home a parade of troubled vets. She has castigated generals for lying about her son death, as has her friend, Mrs. Tillman (Boots on the Ground by Dusk). She has bullied generals to do more for vets. Every day, she pushes herself to help vets in memory of her son. For years, she has overextended herself to better others’ lives as Santa wishes we and our business and policy leaders would. She has run herself down and developed some medical complication that have long required medical attention but like so many others she lacks health care coverage.

Public and personal policy counts year round, not just at Christmas. How many elves a nation has working every year all year long counts. Who and how you compensate your elves and Santas makes a difference year round, not just at Christmas.

Waging wars produces too many Gold Star moms year round. If we are ever going to get away from waging those deadly, maiming, crippling wars, we need to build an ARMY of peaceful warriors, not just a few brigades begging for budgeting. We need to build an army of good doing elves, not more pricey mercenaries or high tech drones. We need to field Americans and other world citizens to serve and build cost effectively at home and abroad, which you as a lovable innocent learned that Santa’s elves did year round at the North Pole. You liked Santa’s army of doing good elves then. Why not build that army of doing-good grownups today?

People’s Lobby’s citizen-initiated American World Service Corps Congressional Proposals (AWSC) builds that army of gift givers when a broke, warring, and climate challenged world needs it.

If you can, why not send a New Year’s advocacy or tax-deductible gift to People’s Lobby’s budget-less efforts to build the joy-spreading elf teams the world needs. Few Christmas gifts would protect your loved ones more from ignorance, war, and disastrous climate change.

Donate at http://www.worldservicecorps.us/donate.htm

Contact your Congressional rep at http://www.contactingthecongress.org/

“If the American World Service Corps had existed when my son was alive, he would have served in that… because he loved kids… and he would be alive today…” Nadia McCaffrey

We owe our moms another kind of peaceful, productive 21st century AWSC army, so we will need fewer tearfully built Veterans Villages in the future.

If you’d prefer to be removed from my Christmas list, return with “Remove Christmas 09 “in the subject line.