New Years Resolution: Solve Americas Biggest Problem, End up Bitter and Cynical

An amusing rant by a visionary idealist with one crackpot idea after another. He sets off on a manic trip to Washington D.C. to solve the big problems. He's all about saving the planet, changing the world and transforming America into a healthier, cheaper and friendlier place. He lays out his grandiose ideas about affordable health care, housing and transportation as he follows his bliss.I wrote this series in 2005 for the Coastal Post, a Marin county monthly newspaper, an icon of the Free Press in the SF Bay Area that published my articles and columns from 1990 until its untimely demise in 2010. This series was written as a Walter Mitty adventure tale in a stream of consciousness style based on several manic clients I'd evaluated as a psychiatric crisis clinician. They were always the most interesting and quotable in my case notes, with their pressured speech, quick slants down field, leaping receptions and absolute conviction about their concepts. You might say that sounds like all my writing, but this was deliberate. My sister said it was the funniest articles I ever wrote, or at least shared with her, so that's an endorsement. The first article in this series was the seed concept for my book on reforming health care, Save Trillions with Universal Health Care. This first New Year's health care solution was a little more twisted, as are those for affordable housing and healthy transportation. I've developed more evidence based solutions for these too included in Lose Weight, Save Money. and Really Reduce Greenhouse Gases. I've edited the series from those original articles to tighten it up and match Smashwords format. I've included scanned illustrations from different versions of Peter Pan. The cover image is from an adventure in Oz illustration, I forget which book. This is an experiment to see whether smashwords grinds up images.